The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, formerly the Abigail Adams Smith Museum, is an historic

antebellum Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to: United States history * Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern United States ** Antebellum Georgia ** Antebellum South Carolina ** Antebellum Virginia * Antebellum ar ...

residential building at 421 East 61st Street, near the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Quee ...

, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It is generally open to the public as a museum, though as of October 2022 it is temporarily closed.

History

One of the few remaining pre-1800 buildings in Manhattan, the house was originally planned in 1795 as an estate for Colonel William S. Smith and his wife,

Abigail Abigail () was an Israelite woman in the Hebrew Bible married to Nabal; she married the future King David after Nabal's death ( 1 Samuel ). Abigail was David's second wife, after Saul and Ahinoam's daughter, Michal, whom Saul later ma ...

. The Smiths never completed the building; it was ultimately built as a

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and

stable A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; the ...

in 1799 for the nearby estate of William T. Robinson. Joseph Coleman Hart bought the house and converted it into a hotel in 1826. The Mount Vernon Hotel operated in a city experiencing huge commercial growth after the opening of the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing ...

. Its location offered guests a respite from the dirt, noise, and bustle of city life. In the 1830s, the commercial shipping and business districts of New York City lay below

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

, while private residences extended as far north as modern-day

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, and it was common for upper- and middle-class residents and visitors to take day trips to the then-rural setting that is now

midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildi ...

. One of over 50 day hotels in or near New York City, the Mount Vernon attracted middle-class guests with leisure activities such as boating trips, unusual exhibitions, reading, and making new friends. In a city without public parks or public libraries, these day hotels offered "gentlemen and their families" and other guests new ways to have fun. They could escape the explosive growth of New York City's population and the ensuing urbanization (the population of New York City, 123,706 in 1820, had grown to 202,589 by 1830) and spend a quiet day near the river, and be home downtown by sunset.

Frances Trollope Frances Milton Trollope, also known as Fanny Trollope (10 March 1779 – 6 October 1863), was an English novelist who wrote as Mrs. Trollope or Mrs. Frances Trollope. Her book, '' Domestic Manners of the Americans'' (1832), observations from a ...

and James Stuart, a Scottish diarist, are two foreign travelers who visited New York City during the time when the Mount Vernon Hotel operated under Hart. Stuart recorded his 1829 stay at the Mount Vernon Hotel in his ''Three Years in North America'' (1833):

We immediately set about obtaining a comfortable lodging-house in the neighbourhood of the city, and at length pitched our tent at Mount Vernon, about four miles from New York, on the East River or Long Island Sound, a good house in an airy situation, from the door of which a stage went to New York two or three times a-day. The house is placed upon the top of the bank, about fifty feet from the river; and the view of the river and of the gay sailing craft constantly passing, and tossed about by the eddies in every direction, is very interesting. The house in which we got rooms is kept by the stage-hirer, and is much resorted to in the afternoon by persons taking their evening ride or drive from New York; it being very much the custom to stop at such a house as this, and have a little spirits and water or lemonade. There was a course for trotting horses in an adjoining field, which tended to increase the number of people. We bargained from the beginning to have our meals in our own parlour, and had many pleasant walks for exercise in the neighbouring parts of the island of Manhattan, at times when they were free from the crowds of people who come out of the city in the evenings.

The Mount Vernon Hotel operated until 1833, when it was purchased by Jeremiah Towle, who converted it to a private residence. His daughters continued to live in the house through 1905, when the Standard Gas Light Company bought the house and erected gas tanks nearby. The house was then bought by Jane Teller Robinson in 1919. The

Colonial Dames of America The Colonial Dames of America (CDA) is an American organization composed of women who are descended from an ancestor who lived in British America from 1607 to 1775, and was of service to the colonies by either holding public office, being in t ...

purchased the site in 1924 to use as its headquarters. In 1939, the house opened to the public as the Abigail Adams Smith Museum. The planting plan for the Abigail Adams Smith Museum gardens was by New York landscape designer Alice Recknagel Ireys and Georgian landscape designer Kate Basilashvili. In the early 2000s , pthere was an unsuccessful attempt to

rebrand Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...

the area around the museum as "Mount Vernon". At that time, the blocks immediately surrounding it were not given a specific name, and much of the former Mount Vernon estate had been demolished to make way for the

Queensboro Bridge The Queensboro Bridge, officially named the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, is a cantilever bridge over the East River in New York City. Completed in 1909, it connects the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens with the Upper Ea ...

, which had opened in 1908. This area is considered part of the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the we ...

Lenox Hill Lenox Hill () is a neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It forms the lower section of the Upper East Side—east of Park Avenue in the 60s and 70s. A significant portion of the neighborhood lies within the Upper East Side Historic Dist ...

today.

Current management

The museum is currently owned and operated by the Colonial Dames of America.

Public programs

The museum tells the story of New York City's tremendous period of growth following the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, one year before the Mount Vernon Hotel opened. Tours, public programs, and other educational programs are offered. The museum is open to the public 11 am to 4 pm Tuesday through Sunday for interpreter-led tours of the period rooms and garden. The museum provides school field trips and hosts an average of 35 programs throughout the year, including monthly Lunchtime Lectures, Children's Storytime, summer concerts, and History Weeks for school-aged children. Annual events include the George Washington's Birthday Ball, Halloween Murder Mystery, and Candlelight Holiday Tours.

Ongoing research

Each summer, Hearst Fellows conduct original research on aspects of New York history and daily life, including trade, travel, leisure, education, urban development, popular music, and gender and race relationships of the 1820s-30s.

References

External links