Meg Lynch

Morris-Jumel Mansion Museum

The Morris-Jumel Mansion is Manhattan's oldest private residence, built in 1765, and located in the historic Harlem Heights area of New York City. The Mansion is truly a witness to history as three main time periods are interpreted inside this historic house museum. The Mansion first served as the summer country estate to British Colonel Roger Morris and his wealthy Dutch merchant wife, Mary Philipse. Due to their loyalist leanings the couple were forced to flee their home at the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. During the course of the war the house served as the headquarters for General George Washington in the fall of 1776, and the Battle of Harlem Heights was fought literally in the backyard of the Mansion. Washington returned in the summer of 1790 and hosted a dinner with his first cabinet at the Mansion, sitting around the table were John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Henry Knox. The nineteenth century saw the home return to its function as a summer house when Stephen and Eliza purchased the house in 1810. Stephen, a wealthy wine merchant and his social climber wife Eliza, were one of the wealthiest couples in New York and furnished their home in the Empire style. After Stephen's death Eliza remarried former Vice President, Aaron Burr, in 1833. After Eliza's death in 1865 the house became a museum in 1904, first under the jurisdiction of the Daughters of the American Revolution and then as part of the Historic House Trust of New York City in the 1980s.