A House with a History by Philo T. Ruggles

It is a treat to see a house occasionally that is a little different from its neighbors. One that has not a brown-stone front and high brown-stone steps, and a brown-stone railing, and a brown-stone area, and the face of a brown-stone servant girl looking out of the basement window. There are a few houses in New York that were not cast in this mould, but very few; and whenever we see one it is a relief to the eyes to stop and look at it. If it happens to be a very old house, with one or two walls a little out of plumb and big dormer windows on the roof, so much the better, for then it brings a suggestion of big, airy rooms and other luxuries our ancestors enjoyed before what we call the "modern conveniences" were invented. These modern conveniences consist, in very large part, of rooms a trifle larger than lock-boxes in the Post-office, entries whose narrowness is equaled only by their shortness, and five or six families trying to live in the space that would comfortably hold one. We see so few fine old-fashioned places in New York that we are more likely than most people to appreciate one when we do find it. The old homes of nearly all the wealthy old families have gone to the dogs. Some have been torn down, some have been changed into apartment houses, some are business places. There is hardly one left just as it stood half a century ago. The thing we are most accustomed to is the flimsy house that was put up yesterday, and that will be pulled down tomorrow to make room for a larger. In this uncomfortable and unsettled state of affairs he is a benefactor who discovers a real stately old mansion, standing to-day just as it stood nearly a century ago, inside and out, with no changes but those made by old Time. So much the better if the mansion is one known to history, and if its broad rooms have sheltered men whose names we venerate. There is at least one such mansion still standing in New York -- standing now just as it stood in the days we read about in history, filled up to the very throat with furniture of the last century, that loses nothing by comparison with our own, overflowing with bric-a-brac, the walls hidden with paintings. Better than all, still occupied by the same family that owned it when Canal street was a very good street, but rather too far up town.

If celebrity had the same bad effect upon houses that it has upon some men, this rare old house would stretch itself up several feet higher and refuse to have anything to do with its neighbors. But it does not. It is as modest as it is grand and stately; as kindly and inviting as some fine old gentlemen with cut-away coat and gray locks; so secure in its social position that it does not need to humiliate everything around it to make its own greatness felt. It is a house with a history. No story of the Revolution is complete without a mention of it. When New York was not much more than a big town, it stood just where it stands now. George Washington once lived in it, in those stormy times, and laid his plans of battle. Many men whose names are part of the history of the Republic have eaten in its big dining-room, danced on its smooth parlor floor, and slept in its airy chambers. In its drawing-room a hundred Indians have stood, dressed in all the wild grandeur of their native costume, and consulted with the great chief of the pale-faces. Then when the war was over, and the cannon were left out in the fields to rust, the fine old house became a place of public entertainment. The man who started the first line of stages from New York to Boston turned it into a hotel, and advertised that the octagon room in which the Indians had assembled was "very hapily calculated for a turtle party. " Confiscated by the Government, the old house, by a wonderful combination of circumstances, had a good deal to do with getting together the nucleus of the great Astor fortune. Then it went into the hands of a wealthy French merchant, who brightened up its rusty parts and made it once more a fine private residence. This merchant took a ship over to France, loaded it down with fine furniture and paintings, with young trees, and with everything he could buy, to ornament his house and grounds. Some of the furniture came out of French palaces, and is quite as grand and costly as the finest that can be bought at the present day. This furniture still stands in the big parlor and drawing-room, these pictures still hang upon the walls, and these trees are still growing in the spacious grounds. The house stands on the summit of Harlem Heights. For many years it was known as the Roger Morris house, but it is more familiar to us as the Jumel mansion.