No One Home

Like Many Historic House Museums, Manhattan's Oldest House Needs Visitors.

By Jacquelin Cangro | Online Only | Nov. 7, 2008 

New York City has owned the Morris Jumel Mansion, the oldest house in Manhattan, since 1903.

Credit: Tom Stoelker

At the northern tip of Manhattan, now dotted with high-rise apartment buildings and bridges, the land once boasted the finest vistas in the country with wide-ranging views of Long Island Sound, the New Jersey Palisades, and even Staten Island. Roger Morris and his wife, Mary, jumped at the chance to buy the property for a summer getaway amid quince trees and plenty of fishing to keep the retired British officer busy. Mount Morris was built in 1765, making it the oldest surviving home in Manhattan.

In 1776, the crown-loyal Morrises fled the home before the Continental army approached. General George Washington used the mansion as his headquarters in September and October that year while his troops battled the British for New York. Later, Washington revisited the house with John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. After the war, Stephen and Eliza Jumel bought the house in 1810. Stephen died suddenly in 1832, leaving Eliza to marry former vice-president Aaron Burr. After they died, the mansion changed hands many times before the Daughters of the American Revolution stepped in to preserve the house in 1904.

Today the Morris-Jumel Mansion is owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and operated by an independent not-for-profit group. The Historic House Trust, a New York City organization which oversees 23 house museums in the area, serves as an oversight body hiring property managers and expert preservationists.

Surviving the Economic Crisis

Even in a city that boasts more than 44 million visitors each year, the Morris-Jumel Mansion finds it difficult to make ends meet. Far from the hustle and bustle of tourist hubs, only 15,000 people tour the museum every year, most of whom are on their third or fourth trip to New York. "It's fair to say that we have struggled since 2001 and operated at a small deficit," says Ken Moss, executive director of the mansion. He says the constant challenge to find a balance between maintaining affordable admissions prices and covering rising operating costs.

It's an all-too-real experience for many of America's historic house museums. The Morris-Jumel Mansion is one of the lucky few that receives partial support from a larger entity like the New York City Parks Department, but most house museums are not as fortunate.

Many get little financial help from the government, depending on revenue from admissions, endowment funds and donations to keep the lights on. The Mount, author Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, Mass., needs $3 million by the end of this month to avoid foreclosure. Despite a feverish fundraising campaign and staff cuts, at the time of this writing, organizers will be about $1.5 million short of that goal, although they hold hope a benefactor will step in to match the funds raised. The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Conn., is another notable historic house in dire financial straits after a $19 million addition in 2003 to include a state-of-the-art visitors center.

New Strategies

Developing creative ways to increase revenue and awareness is crucial to the future of home museums. "Many [historic house museums] are operating on a shoestring, but they're very important to their communities," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "People put in a lot of volunteer time and effort just to keep them going."

In fact, community stewardship is one way to attract new visitors to historic houses. Whether surrounded by a lower-income residential neighborhood, like the Morris-Jumel Mansion, or a distance from the main highway in a small town, like The Mount, creating targeted programs for nearby residents is a priority for most museum organizers. "It's critical for communities to value the site, no matter where it is," says Moss.

Other revenue streams come from hosting special events. In September, the Mark Twain House gathered a group of 11 best-selling authors for the "Writers Reading for Twain" fundraiser to help save the house of the author who inspired them. Many historic houses made the tough decision to rent out their venue for weddings and parties, but it's something that gives most organizers pause. "These houses are our babies," says Moss. "The primary concern must always be about preservation."

In the 1942 film George Washington Slept Here, a family saved their house from foreclosure by finding a letter from Washington himself and selling it for a princely sum. While that Hollywood ending may be just that for today's historic house museums, their directors know they must find new ways to keep their doors open to promote and preserve history for the next generation.

Jacquelin Cangro, a freelance writer in Brooklyn, recently completed her first novel. 

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