Sunnybank, Dwight James Baum House
5011 Waldo Avenue | also 301 West 250th Street | Riverdale | built 1913
Open on the map4 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.
- 1913
Architect Dwight James Baum builds Sunnybank as his own family home in the new Fieldston development
Dwight James Baum and his wife toured Fieldston with Edward Delafield while Baum still worked in an architectural office in the city, and they bought this lot to build a house they named Sunnybank. In a 1932 interview Baum recalled building it in 1914, but city building records show work began in 1913. He went on to become Fieldston's most prolific architect, credited at one point with designing or renovating about a third of its houses.
- 1914
The New York Times traces Baum's new Craftsman home to the old Dutch Colonial farmhouses of Pennsylvania
Baum's design mixes Craftsman details: part-stucco walls, a hipped roof with deep eaves and large and small shed dormers. A 1914 New York Times article said it derived from Pennsylvania's old Dutch Colonial farmhouses. The book New York 1900 later saw it as an American take on the English free vernacular manner of architects C.F.A. Voysey and M.H. Baillie Scott.
- 1915
Baum opens his architecture practice inside the house, winning commissions across Fieldston
Read more
In 1915 Baum began running his architectural office out of Sunnybank. An early job was the 1916 remodeling of the Delafield family mansion on West 246th Street, which burned in 1994. As more neighborhood work arrived he moved the office beside the Fieldston sales office at West 246th Street and Waldo Avenue, so new lot buyers could cross over and plan their houses with him.
“In 1915, Baum opened an architectural office in this house.”
- 1920
Delafield Estates sells Baum's former home to Louise P. Schwab
Baum probably lived at Sunnybank for only a few years before moving to 5001 Goodridge Avenue, another house of his own design. In 1920 the Delafield Estates corporation sold this house to Louise P. Schwab.
“The house was sold by the Delafield Estates corporation to Louise P. Schwab in 1920.”
Nearby
- Merritt House5000 Fieldston Road | 2 entries
- Hilda Staufer House5025 Waldo Avenue | 2 entries
- 5022 Fieldston Road1 entry
- Nils V. Hansell House5012 Waldo Avenue | 2 entries
- 5000 Waldo Avenue1 entry
- 4686 Waldo Avenue1 entry