TWO: WHERE PATROONS AND KNICKERBOCKERS FLOURISHED
Photo by Frank Cousins Art Company
MORRIS-JUMEL HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY.
THE MORRIS-JUMEL MANSION, NEW YORK CITY
WHERE WASHINGTON ESCAPED FROM THE BRITISH BY A
FIFTEEN MINUTE MARGIN
"A Pleasant situated Farm, on the Road leading to King's Bridge, in the Township of Harlem, on York-Island, containing about 100 acres, near 30 acres of which is Wood-land, a fine piece of Meadow Ground, and more easily be made: and commands the finest Prospect in the whole Country: the Land runs from River to River: there is Fishing, Oystering, and Claming at either end...."
When, in 1765, Roger Morris, whose city house was at the corner of Whitehall and Stone streets, saw this advertisement in the New York Mercury, he hungered for the country. So he bought the offered land, and by the summer of 1766 he had completed the sturdy Georgian house that, after a century and a half, looks down on the city that has grown to it and beyond it.
In an advertisement published in 1792, in the New York Daily Advertiser, a pleasing description of the mansion of Roger Morris was given: