The Delavan Terrace Historic District is located along the street of that name in Northwest Yonkers, New York, United States. It consists of 10 buildings (12 when originally designated), all houses. In 1983 it was recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The houses were home to a number of prominent industrialists in Yonkers at the time, since they enjoyed an excellent view over the Hudson River. They are built in Late Victorian and other turn of the 20th century revival architectural styles. One has one of the few remaining Eastlake interiors in the city. The earliest house in the district, the Smith-Collins House, dated to 1854 with an 1875 renovation, has since been demolished, spurring historic preservation efforts throughout Yonkers. Most of the district was built after 1900. ()
Originally it was home to affluent residents, such as local business executives at the Otis Elevator Company and the Alexander Smith Carpet Mills. Actress Billie Burke, an early silent film star who later played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, lived on Delavan Terrace in the 1920s after her marriage to Florenz Ziegfeld, when she was concentrating on her stage career on Broadway. The district has become more middle-class over time as Yonkers has grown and suburbanized around it. All the remaining houses are privately owned. Many remain intact.
Geography
The district is essentially rectangular in shape, covering both sides of Delavan Terrace and the lots at the corners on Palisade and Park Avenues. An extension at the southwest includes the now-vacant lot where the Smith–Collins House stood on the west side of Palisade. The total area is . Topographically, the street is on the south end of a ridge between the Hudson River a half-mile (1 km) to the west and one of its tributaries, the Saw Mill River, the same distance to the east. The terrain thus drops sharply to the south and west, and the east end of Delavan is higher than the west.
On the east and south are large modern apartment complexes. To the southwest is a sharp drop down into a parking lot for a Ukrainian American cultural center. Northwest of the district is another apartment complex. On the northeast and east are other houses, generally more modern than those in the district. The neighborhood in general is residential, with downtown Yonkers a mile (1.6 km) to the south-southwest.
Buildings
All ten buildings in the district are houses. There are no non-contributing properties.
147 Park Avenue. The only property in the district not known by the name of an owner, this five-bay, two-and-a-half-story Mission Revival stucco-faced house dates to 1908. Its entrance porch has a hipped roof supported by stucco piers; the main entrance has a denticulated paneled surround with one-over-one double-hung sash window sidelights. Most of the sash windows elsewhere on the house are set in molded architraves. At the northeast corner is a six-sided pavilion. The main house's hipped pantile roof is pierced by dormer windows with six-over-six three-part windows. A hipped-roof, below-grade garage is on the east. Reuben Borland House, 10 Delavan Terrace. This is a timber frame two-bay, two-and-a-half-story house faced in stone at ground level and shingles on the upper stories topped by a cross-gabled gambrel roof. Built in 1904, it is a late application of the Queen Anne style. Its distinctive features include a recessed porch around the entrance and its architrave flanked by Ionic pilasters, as well as a variety of fenestration typical of the style, including bay windows, oriel windows and oval windows. Upstairs is a recessed attic porch with curved shingled cheek walls and semi-elliptical balcony supported by brackets. The roofline has flaring eaves and denticulated raking boards. Dormers have been added and a side balcony removed. The garage has a hipped roof and half-timbering. Alexander Denniston House, 6 Delavan Terrace. This three-bay, two-and-a-half-story cross-gabled Tudor Revival house dates to 1911. It, too, has a recessed pent-roofed entrance porch with four-pointed arch on the architrave, flanked by sidelights. Above it is a projecting gabled pavilion supported by consoles with pendants and diamond-paned casement windows. Elsewhere on the facades are bay windows and half-timbering in the gable ends, per the style. The side porch is supported by Tuscan columns; the rear porch has an open deck. A. Doty House, 4 Delavan Terrace. Built in 1926, this is the newest house in the district. It is a two-and-a-half-story, five-bay brick neo-Colonial building topped by a slate-shingled hipped roof with a balustrade at its apex. At the center of the ground floor on the north is a fluted, paneled main entrance surround with sidelights and an elliptical fanlight. The two six-over-six sash windows on either side have paneled lintels. At the roofline is a denticualted cornice. Segmental-arched dormers and end chimneys pierce the roof. On the east side a three-bay breezeway leads to the garage. William Howard House, 9 Delavan Terrace. Another two-and-a-half-story cross-gambreled frame Queen Anne, this was built in 1904. It features a front porch with wrought iron work and Ionic columns running the full three bays, topped by an open deck. Ionic pilasters also frame the double doors at the main entrance. Dormers pierce the roof; the original shingle siding has been covered over by vinyl. Griffith John House, 23 Delavan Terrace. This two-and-a-half-story, three-bay 1906 Queen Anne combines stone facing on the ground level with vinyl upstairs. The continuous porch has a bracketed cornice and is upheld by stone piers. A bay window projects at the southwest corner. The hipped roof is pierced by large projecting gabled dormers and a stone chimney. E.D. Knap House, 14 Delavan Terrace. This 1907 house is the only one in the district in the Western Stick style, demonstrating its evolution into the Bungalow style. Its shingled two and a half stories are four bays wide, with that facade looking east. It has a glazed entrance porch, oriel window on carved brackets, mix of casement and sash windows and a recessed first-story porch supported by wooden piers. The hipped roof has hipped dormers and exposed rafters at the roofline. Law–Baldwin House, 354 Palisade Avenue. With a construction date of 1886, this three-bay, three-and-a-half-story Shingle-style house is now the oldest property in the district. A one-story south wing was added in 1894. It features a continuous balustraded porch with Ionic columns and an open deck on top. In the gable ends of its intersecting gambrel roofs is a recessed window with curving cheeks. The roofline features denticulated raking boards. Littel House, 149 Park Avenue. This is a Tudor Revival–style house that has the stucco facing but not the half-timbering, built in 1915. Five bays in width and two and a half stories tall, its cross-gabled roof is complemented by a pent roof on the first-story entrance porch, supported by Tuscan columns with intervening trellis work. Wood string courses set off the stories. Oriels with diamond-paned casement windows are complemented by sash in various sizes on the main facades. Charles E. Otis House, 5 Delavan Terrace. This two-and-a-half-story, three-bay Tudor Revival house was built in 1904. It features a recessed four-centered pointed-arch balustraded entrance porch. Applied pilasters and sidelights frame the main entrance, and a projecting gabled entrance pavilion with half-timbering and wooden consoles. On the stucco and half-timbered facade themselves are a mixture of sash windows, diamond-paned casement and bracketed oriel windows. The hipped roof has a centrally placed gabled dormer; the garage is below grade.
Smith–Collins House The Smith–Collins House was located at 323 Palisade Avenue. Built in 1854, it was the oldest building in the district at the time it was listed. It was a two-and-a-half-story High Victorian Gothic house with many bays, sided at first in clapboard and later stucco.
Its most-striking feature was a three-story crenelated entrance tower on the northeast corner with a round-arched entrance and windows. It was complemented by bay windows elsewhere on the facade; the sash windows had wooden architraves and shutters. On the rear was a two-story glazed veranda with four center-arched windows and a balustraded terrace. The many gables on the roof were themselves pierced by gabled dormers with vergeboards.
In the rear was a carriage house, the only one in the district. It had its original clapboard siding and a hipped roof with a cupola. The main house's interior had Eastlake-style wooden paneling, molding and mantels. It was one of the few intact examples of that kind of interior in the city.
In 1875, it was renovated substantially. The clapboard was refaced with stucco. The porte-cochère, tower belvedere, gable trim and most of the front porch were removed. In 2007, it and the carriage house were demolished. Only the front wall and gate remain.
History
Due to being part of large landholdings, Delavan Terrace, and the land that eventually became it, was developed later than some other comparable areas of the city. When it was, however, that development occurred in bursts which caught it up with them.
1693–1853: Pastureland
The future Delavan Terrace was part of the original land grant to Frederick Philipse from the British crown during the colonial era. It was used as pasture, and remained so even after the Philipse family's lands were confiscated for their Loyalist stance during the American Revolution. Lemuel Wells, who eventually obtained that parcel as part of his estate, was averse to selling or subdividing any of his real property, so it remained undeveloped when he died in 1842.
His heirs had less compunction about doing so, and by 1843 it had been sold and partitioned. Streets were soon surveyed and laid out, with houses coming not long afterwards. This process accelerated in 1849, when the Hudson River Railroad was built, spurring the industrialization of Yonkers.
1853–1903: The first two houses
The first house in the future district was built during this period, although not by either of its later eponyms. In 1854, I.F. Wheeler built the house on the west side of Palisade Avenue, overlooking the river. It is likely that he was inspired by the work of Andrew Jackson Downing, an architect based upriver in Newburgh who had, until his death two years earlier, advocated for houses more harmonious with their natural surroundings than those built in the classically-inspired Federal or Greek Revival modes, the architectural styles that had up to then been prevalent in 19th-century America. Two designs in The Architecture of Country Houses, Downing's 1850 pattern book, strongly suggest the house Wheeler built.
In 1873, after the population of Yonkers had more than quadrupled, Wheeler's land and house were sold and became part of the estate of Alexander Smith, founder of the carpet mills that bear his name, also today listed on the Register. Property tax records show that the assessed valuation of Smith's new purchase almost tripled, suggesting either that a new structure was built there or, as seems more likely, the existing house was substantially renovated. The effect was to transform it from the Italianate style promoted by Downing into the High Victorian Gothic then becoming popular. In this it shares many similarities with Glenview, financier John Bond Trevor's home on the banks of the river, now part of the Hudson River Museum. Both homes have their main entrances located in towers with belvederes, similar consoles, balustraded porches and Eastlake interiors.