Records of Bronxville Real Estate,
1897-1930
Entire Record
Catalog
Transcription
The village of Bronxville is known for the beauty of its homes. The Story of Lawrence Park, issued around 1897, describes Bronxville’s first and best-known real estate development, one that is listed as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places. The cover of the March 1898 Scientific American, Building Edition, features an Elizabethan-style Lawrence Park House, known as the “Owl House,” once lived in by illustrator William Smedley and later by writer and New Yorker critic, Brendan Gill.
The Sagamore Development Company developed Sagamore Park in 1910 on land very near Lawrence Park and issued this promotional brochure by well-known children’s writer Tudor Jenks. In 1928 Joseph P. Kennedy bought the Bronxville home seen here in a post card ca. 1920 and a real estate advertisement in 1924. Future President of the United States John F. Kennedy was a teenager when his family came to Bronxville and in the early summer of 1940 he worked here on his book, Why England Slept. The Kennedys sold the home in 1942, and it was torn down in the 1950s.
Architect Charles Lewis Bowman put his stamp on Bronxville architecture in the 1920s and 30s by designing many of Bronxville’s most beautiful homes. This 1930 monograph shows many examples of his work, which range in style from Georgian and Tudor to Norman and Mediterranean.