A 1972 article in the New York Times pointed out that “George Washington never slept in the pre‐Revolutionary War Caleb Hyatt House,” nor did any historically significant event occur there during the Civil War, but that didn’t matter to a group of citizens who decided it was important to preserve a farmhouse that reflected life and changes in Scarsdale since the land was purchased from Native Americans in the 1600s. 

It was a daunting task to complete the applications that would place the house on The National Register of Historical Places and to successfully raise the funds and grants to purchase the house.

On November 29th, 1973, in the offices of the Scarsdale National Bank, the Scarsdale Historical Society was formed. Edwin A. DeLima was the first President, and he was followed by Eda Newhouse who, with many other dedicated members of the Society, led the effort to create the museum.

When the Society finally acquired the deed to the Cudner-Hyatt House on December 11th, 1973, it needed extensive repairs. Restoring it to its former glory required an enormous undertaking involving the community, many volunteers and teams of experts. 

For a detailed chronology of the restoration process and the team from 1973 to 1987, click here.

The museum reflected a 50-year time span from 1836 when the Hyatts bought the farmhouse from the Cudners, to 1896 when Sarah Odell Hyatt died. Meticulous care was given to turning the farmhouse into an authentic representation of a Victorian household. Betty Greenbaum and C. Edwin Linville wrote in the Scarsdale Historical Society Journal. 

“This span of years covers the nations Centennial celebration; the arrival of the railroad from New York to White Plains and the advent of the telephone; it also covers a period of time when there unpaved roads, no pubic natural gas, little or no electricity, no fire department, no trolley to White Plains, and transportation as primarily by horse, or by horse and wagon or buggy. It was period of great advances , and at the same time, of a reluctance to replace many earlier customs, furnishing and ways of life.

Another very valid reason for using this 50-year period is that there are few, if any farmhouses restored to this era in the Westchester area. Therefore the Society feels very committed and obligated to complete this project properly, having done the necessary in-depth research , so that everything can be documented.

Even though by 1886 Scarsdale was still a small, rural village boasting some new villas on country estates used during the summers by Manhattanites, the shadow of the expanding metropolis was beginning to appear. While the Hyatts were tilling a small farm they were also becoming professional surveyors, pursuing a professional essential to the real estate development that was to begin in Scarsdale in the 1890s.”

Click through our slideshow to see how the museum was restored and beautifully furnished to reflect the Victorian Era. (Photos by Gabriele Holtermann-Gorden and Lesley Topping). 

The 100 Years Ago Program was one of several educational programs developed by the Scarsdale Historical Society and Scarsdale Public Schools between from 1985 and 2006. The programs included a hands-on approach to learning about local history and life in the nineteenth century. School children from all over Westchester visited the Cudner-Hyatt House Museum, and participated in activities with educators, artists, musicians and other professionals.

In 1998, Mrs. Coleman’s second grade students from Edgewood School wrote this song about their trip to the Cudner-Hyatt House Museum.

It's a Museum

Carried water
Beat the rug,
Washed the socks,
And the sidewalks.
Ate cookies, drank apple cider
That we got from the icebox.

No electricity
No football
No video games
Low ceilings
It’s a museum, it’s a museum.

Beautiful and comfy pinafores
Fingerless gloves and bonnets
High boots, wool capes
Keep us warm, in the wintertime

These videos from over 15 years ago give us a glimpse of how elementary school students participated in learning about local history and life during the nineteenth century.

Off the Blackboard Into Role Playing the Olden Days

This article, based on research by Betty Greenbaum and written by Judy Handelman, was published in the Scarsdale Historical Society Journal, 1998.

“In February, I visited Heathcote’s 1st grade classes as Mrs. Sarah Hyatt, and told the wide­ eyed, open-mouthed children what life was like for me, my husband Oliver and our sons in 1898, 100 years ago. This was the first time a pre-visit was done in costume, and in first-person interpretation. The children responded so well that we used the same technique for their site visit. As Mrs. Hyatt, I took pride in all the comforts we had in the house, and introduced the children to maiden Aunt Sarah, who showed the parlor and dining room, and to Ellen Holland, the 14 year-old-domestic from Ireland, who complained to the children about all the work she did in the kitchen and buttery—not to mention how bad my boys were! The children’s response was very enthusiastic.” —Beverley Brigandi

The Scarsdale Historical Society was chartered as an educational institution in 1973 by the New York State Department of Education. From the beginning, it has been dedicated to promoting education in every way
possible. Early educational programs at the Society centered on our Museum exhibitions. Each had projects created specifically to appeal to teachers and students, such as “treasure hunts” in which the students were challenged to find certain items on display.

By 1987, the Cudner-Hyatt House was restored and usable. Because the study of local history, beginning in the fourth grade, was mandated by the New York State Board of Regents, we began in 1989 to develop ways to
implement this study, using the Cudner-Hyatt House as a center of learning. In conjunction with the Board of Education and the Fox Meadow School, we started a two­ year cooperative study with the Board’s Curriculum Office, the Scarsdale’s Teachers Institute, parents and volunteers, to develop a local history program for fourth graders.

Courses were devised and extensive research was done including trips to other historic sites.

The decision to have the Cudner-Hyatt House and the Local History Program reflect the mid-19th century was made because there was very little coverage of that era in Westchester. Instead, most other school history classes concentrated on the Pilgrim and Colonial periods, The 19th century was also a period from which the Society was able to collect a great deal of material, including Cudner and Hyatt family artifacts. 

Participants in the Fourth Grade Program learn to quilt, play parlor games, and cook on the 1882 cast-iron burning stove. For each participating class, Education Director Beverley Brigandi plans a pre-visit slide presentation
and a post-visit analysis in the classroom, to help the students relate their on-site experience to the larger context of their study of local history. 

Entering its tenth year this fall, the program has been expanded to include two local parochial schools, I.H.M. and St Pius X, and public schools in Mt. Vernon, Edgemont, Greenburgh, Larchmont and Pleasantville. During the 1996 to 1997 school year, 2,263 children participated in the program at the Cudner-Hyatt House, compared to 1,265 the year before. 

The 1828 Quaker Meeting House were the offices of the Historical Society and home for many exhibits. It has its own unique history. Originally on Weaver Street it was moved, reconstructed and restored beside the Cudner-Hyatt House Museum in 1977.

The history of the Scarsdale Historical Society’s association with the 1828 Quaker Meeting House dates back to 1976, when Fraydun Manocherian phoned to offer the building, which was being used as a garage on his property at Griffen Avenue and Weaver Street, as a “totally unexpected” gift to the Society.

“Barrie and I were invited to go to the Manocherian property on Griffen Avenue with Eda, Stan and others to look at the Quaker Meeting House. When we first saw it, it was being used as a garage. . . . After looking around, it didn’t take long to decide the building was a bit of history that deserved to be preserved.”
—Gloria Mabie (Recording Secretary in 1976) in the 1990 Dinner Journal

“Our hope of moving the 1828 Quaker Meeting House in sections collapsed when we began to take the old structure apart. It became necessary to build a new wooden skeleton and then add to it as much of the original Quaker Meeting House as we could save—the old bricks in the chimney, the old windows and doors, some of the siding. The finished building may now resemble a new house, but it is measured to the inch the same size as the original.”
—Eda Newhouse, President’s Address, Annual Fall Meeting, October 26, 1977

20th Century Moves
According to Mickey Singsen’s Quakers in Scarsdale (pamphlet, 1978). in the early 20th century, “With only a few Quakers left on Quaker Ridge, the meeting houses were used only occasionally, so members of the Purchase Monthly Meeting, of which the Mamaroneck [Scarsdale] Preparative Meeting had always been a part, sold the land and meeting houses to the nearest neighbor, William W. Heaton, whose estate lay next to it on two sides.” Heaton moved both buildings: the original Hicksite house, which had been erected in Mamaroneck in 1737 and moved to Scarsdale in 1768, was moved again, this time to Fenimore Road in Mamaroneck and used as a gardener’s dwelling. The 1828 Quaker Meeting House was also moved, to what is now the corner of Griffen Avenue and Weaver Street, “and became a tool and storage shed for the Heatons.” By the 1970s, it had become a garage for vintage cars, owned by the Fraydun Manocherians, who in 1976 offered it to the Scarsdale Historical Society.

A report in the Society’s 1982 Dinner-Dance Journal notes the physical and financial difficulties of moving the Meeting House: “In 1976, the Society received the fortuitous, but totally unexpected gift of the 1828 Quaker Meeting House.” Coming as it did in the midst of the Society’s efforts to restore the Cudner-Hyatt House, which had been acquired in 1974, “this was indeed an unexpected problem. Yet the Society’s charter provided for the saving of important early structures. This first house of worship in the community was also to have been destroyed and its receipt was an opportunity the Society could not lightly reject.” The cost of reconstruction, after dismantling and moving the building, totaled over $50,000, plus an additional $35,000 for constructing a mandated parking area to serve the two buildings, came to more than $85,000. This was raised by obtaining a second mortgage of $58,000 on the Cudner-Hyatt House, which led to the need to raise almost $25,000 annually for nine years, through Annual Fund drives.

By June 24, 1977, its reconstruction completed, the Meeting House was dedicated, and on the following day, a Sunday, the Scarsdale Friends Meeting (which had been established in the early 1940s, when gas rationing made it difficult to travel to Purchase) held a worship meeting in the restored 1828 Meeting House—for the first time in 75 years. Although much of it had to be reconstructed, as noted in Eda Newhouse’s 1977 report quoted at the beginning of this article, old boards, chimneys, doors, windows and some of the original clapboard, as well as the two stepping-stones leading up to the pair of front doors, were incorporated in the structure. In June 1987, the tenth anniversary of its opening, the Society held a special ceremony to honor its donors, the Manocherian family.

New Uses
When it opened in 1977, the building housed in its lower level, as it does now, the Society’s “command center”—its administrative offices, conference room and files. At that early date, before the Cudner-Hyatt House was restored, it also contained our library. Subsequently, the loft was modified to provide a caretaker's apartment. Our Museum was established on the ground floor, which was where the Friends’ meetings were held (the benches were copied from old Quaker patterns). In addition to exhibitions, the Museum Gallery has a multitude of uses; among them are education programs, lectures and programs, workshops, luncheon meetings and conferences.

Fittingly, the first exhibition in the Museum, in the summer of 1977, was “Quaker Memorabilia.” Since then, there have been 85 exhibitions—in just 25 years! Over the years, funding for our exhibitions has been received from many county, state and national arts organizations. But our greatest support, starting with the donation of the building and continuing through years of financial contributions and volunteered time and talent, had been from our community and our members.

To learn more about Quakers in Scarsdale click here.

Produced by Lesley Topping with Barbara Shay MacDonald.