History

The Weckquaskecks. The Dutch and English settlers. The American Revolution. The Civil War and slaves. Hudson River views, the railroad, and roads. Wealthy industrialists and tenant farmers. Baby boomers and development. Reflected in all of it is the property at 3 Dows Lane in Irvington, NY, where today a former carriage house survives through much of the turmoil that has defined America’s evolution. 

Documents trace the land it sits on back to the 1600s, when the explorers Verrazano and later Henry Hudson recorded their encounters hosting the leaders of the Weckquaskecks, a subtribe of the Wappingers (related to the Lanapes), whose population numbered around 3,000 and whose Igloo-like bark huts flanked the Saw Mill River.

The Dutch labeled the Weckquaskeck’s “the Manhattans,” who occupied three-quarters of New Netherlands, today a borough of New York City. In 1626, a neighboring Canarsees Indian tribe in what is now Brooklyn illegally sold the island to the Dutch.

The land surrounding Dows Lane was called the Bisightick tract and was part of a Dutch grant. In 1664, the British took over and, in 1682, they sold the merchant Frederick Philipse 52,000 acres along the Hudson River. He built the Philipsburg Manor, which is today a museum in nearby Sleepy Hollow, NY. 

Ten years later an Indian footpath became the Queen’s highway (known as Broadway after 1850), named for Queen Anne, was a dirt road that stretched from New York City to Albany. When George I became King, the road was renamed the King’s Highway. It later became Albany Post Road.

Philipse leased much of his land to Dutch tenant farmers and then English coopers, blacksmiths, and shipbuilders, whose main means of transportation was the Hudson River. In 1680, land was cleared on the southwest side of the present Dows Lane, where a house (later known as Odell Tavern) still stands. 

Shortly before 1700, Captain John Buckhout leased a huge farm from Philipse (where 3 Dows Lane stands). He died at the age of 103 in 1785, left 240 descendants, and is buried in the Old Dutch Burying Ground in Tarrytown, NY. Buckhout’s daughter, Elizabeth, married John Jewell, and he his family moved to the family farm in 1760.  

In a book of maps found in "Wolfert's Roost" (Portrait of a Village, Irvington, NY), there is a quote taken from "Gentleman's Progress," written in 1744 by Alexander Hamilton, in which he recalls a trip south from Albany by boat on the Hudson river. He said, "We went ashore to the house of one Kaen Buikhaut, a Dutch farmer. The old man was busy making a slaigh... The woman told us she had 18 children, nine boys and as many girls.”

During the American Revolution, the newly created State of New York's Committee of Safety met at Odell’s Tavern to discuss General George Washington's defeat in the Battle of Long Island in 1776. While the area around Dows Lane was considered “neutral ground,” it was occupied by the British, who shortly after winning the battle of White Plains, encamped on the Buckhout property. Following the American Revolution, the state of New York confiscated British land (including the Philipse tract) and sold it to his Patriot tenant farmers, including descendants of the Buckhout and Jewell families. 

Over the next several decades, the area became known as Dearman, named for Justus Dearman, who purchased a large track in 1817. In 1837, a Jewell descendant donated more than three acres of his farm for the beginnings of the Croton Aqueduct (a National Historic Landmark). In 1850, Dearman’s farm (today Main Street) was divided into 266 lots and sold at auction. Five years later Jewell’s son, Thomas, conveyed a 25-foot wide right of way between the east side of the aqueduct and the Post Road. 

The Hudson River Railroad in 1949 and a ferry to Piermont in 1853 led to considerable development. In 1854, the name “Irvington” was adopted by popular vote to honor the American author Washington Irving, who was still alive at the time and living on a property called “Sunnyside” (today a museum). At the time, the village consisted of a population of around 600, a hotel, six stores, a lumber yard, and about 50 houses. 

According an 1852 map of the John Jewell Estate and a real estate chronology put together by Irvington Town Historian Charles L. Kerr in 2019, the land that would later become 3 Dows Lane was part of a 10.7-acre tract owned by William Jewel and acquired in 1858 by Asa Goodale Trask, a large wholesale shoe dealer in New York City and a director of the Shoe and Leather Bank.

Leading up to the Civil War, Irvington was touched by the New York Draft Riots and Federal police were brought in and housed in a schoolhouse on Sunnyside Lane. They were commanded by James Hamilton, who had bought a portion of a nearby farm in 1837 and built “Nevis,” an estate (today a Columbia University lab) named after the Jamaican island where his father had been born. The presence of this special force deterred any violence. While many of the property owners and farmers in the region were slave holders, this was the only instance in which Civil War-related activity directly affected Irvington.

In 1865, a private road became Dows Lane, named for David Dows, a grain merchant who owned several large warehouses along the waterfront. On a parcel adjacent to what is now 3 Dows lane, he built Charlton Hall, a summer residence. Charlton Hall and several structures on the property sat on 30-acres. One of the structures survives today as a residence at 9 Dows. Both 9 and 3 Dows contain the same stone construction and mansard-roof. In 1941, Charlton Hall was demolished but a year later the gatehouse became the residence of famed painter and photographer Charles Sheeler, who referred to the property as “Bird’s Nest.”

The 1868 map from the Atlas of New York and Vicinity shows Trask’s nine-acre property and a large structure called “Lynnwood” and small carriage house at what is today 3 Dows. Trask, who lost his fortune after selling shoes to the Confederacy during the Civil War, sold Lynnwood in 1869 to John Dow Mairs, David Dows’ nephew and business associate. He, in turn, left the property to his wife, Mary Eliza St. John, after he died in 1881. 

in 1885, architect Stanford White designed Cosmopolitan magazine’s new headquarters (today known as the Trent Building) on South Buckhout Street in Irvington. Five years later, Irvington’s population blossomed to over 2,000 and estates were owned by such names as Morgan, Field, Astor, Coffin, Cottenet, and Tiffany. Nearby Lyndhurst (in Tarrytown on the Irvington border)—today a popular tourist destination—had been the home of the Gould family.

In 1907, Mary Dows Mairs Calvert, the daughter of John Dows Mairs, inherited Lynnwood. Over time, she and her neighbors would sell off portions of their estates to the N.Y. Central & Hudson River Railroad Company. Following her death in 1936, it is unclear what happens to Lynnwood until 1940, when it is razed. 

Around the same time, family members agree to sell parcels of what had been Lynnwood, Charlton, and the Edwin and Katherine Mairs estates to David Swope of County Homes, a developer who proposes to build single family homes and extend the Spiro Park neighborhood. Despite opposition from a family member, the plan is approved. The sale, however, does not include the former Lynnwood carriage house and half-acre at 3 Dows Lane, which is then home to Mary Mattison Mairs, Joseph Mattison’s daughter.

Development is delayed until the end of WW II but over the next decade, County Homes sells off the western portion of their three properties to the developers of what would become the Half Moon cooperative apartments and the site of Dows Lane Elementary School. In the early 1970s, there is a failed movement to acquire the land at 3 Dows Lane for the expansion of school grounds and, in 1973, the house is sold to David and Lorrain Epstein. It is sold again in 1988 to Alan and Greta Finger, who build a garage on the north side of the property in 1990.

The current occupants, Larry and Janice Shepps, purchased 3 Dows Lane in 2000. In 2014, they rebuilt the home’s entrance road to improve drainage and aesthetics. In 2018, they renovated an apartment ant above the garage that houses a tenant. They have also lovingly designed and maintained the grounds, which include statuary from the couple’s trips around the world.

Chronology of Ownership 

1852 Map of Estate Origin

Tribute to Edwin H.Mairs