Caleb T. Ward Mansion
141 Nixon Avenue | Tompkinsville | built 1835
Open on the map6 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1826
Caleb Tompkins Ward begins buying the land for his Ward's Hill estate
Caleb Tompkins Ward (1789-1850), of the Eastchester Ward family and possibly a nephew of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, started assembling his estate in October 1826 with a large parcel bought from Thomas Hulme. He had the land surveyed in February 1829 and filed the map with the county in January 1833. The Landmarks Preservation Commission judges that the house went up within a few years of that filing.
- 1835
A Greek Revival mansion rises on Ward's Hill, its portico copied from Minard Lafever's pattern books
The three-story brick house, stuccoed to look like stone, is five bays wide with a two-story Ionic portico and a large rectangular cupola. Its portico follows the north porch of the Erechtheion as drawn in plates of Minard Lafever's The Modern Builder's Guide, and its entablature matches those plates too. Before 1923 the portico carried a pediment and fluted columns, and anthemion ornaments lined the roof and cupola.
- 1850
Judge Albert Ward inherits the estate after his father Caleb's death
When Caleb T. Ward died in 1850, the property went to his son Albert, a leading jurist who had been the first judge of Richmond County's Court of Common Pleas from 1844 to 1846. Albert built St. Paul's Memorial Church on St. Paul's Avenue between 1866 and 1870 in memory of his sister, Mary Mann Ward. He died in 1878.
“After Caleb's death in 1850, the land passed to his son, Albert, a prominent jurist on the island…”
- 1904
Sally Nixon, wife of naval architect Lewis Nixon, buys the mansion from the Ward estate
Sally Lewis Wood Nixon, a descendant of Revolutionary general Andrew Lewis, bought the house from the Ward estate's trustees in December 1904. In 1891 she had married Lewis Nixon, a naval architect who finished first in his 1882 class at the Naval Academy and was a pioneer of steel construction in shipbuilding.
“In December 1904, Sally Lewis Wood Nixon acquired the house from the trustees of the Ward estate…”
- 1923
The mansion is sold and converted into apartments
Sally Nixon sold the house in 1923 to the Ward Hill Realty Corporation, which turned the single-family mansion into a multiple dwelling. To meet the building codes of the day, the new owners altered both the outside and the inside of the house.
“In 1923, Sally Nixon sold the mansion to the Ward Hill Realty Corporation which converted the house from a single family residence to a multiple dwelling.”
- 1982
The Ward Mansion joins the National Register of Historic Places
The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, four years after New York City named it a landmark in 1978. It survives as one of the few great houses left from the era when Staten Island's North Shore drew wealthy New Yorkers as a fashionable resort, and once stood on an estate of 250 acres.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Caleb T. Ward MansionWikipedia
Nearby
- St. Paul's Memorial Church219 St Pauls Avenue | 3 entries
- Audre Lorde Residence207 St Pauls Avenue | 4 entries
- Mary and David Burgher House63 William Street | 4 entries
- Public School 15 (Daniel D. Tompkins School)98 Grant Street | 4 entries
- 364 Van Duzer Street House364 Van Duzer Street | 3 entries
- 390 Van Duzer Street House390 Van Duzer Street | 3 entries