History
Schuyler began acquiring the land around the mansion site by 1760. Most of the house's construction took place while he was in England at the behest of his mentor John Bradstreet. Schuyler called the home "The Pasture" because of the pasture view towards the Hudson River. Schuyler and his wife raised eight of their eleven children in the house which originally included 80 acres (32 ha) of land. The house was visited by several notable figures including George Washington and served as a host and prison to British General John Burgoyne for several days after his defeat at the Battle of Saratoga. On December 14, 1780, the mansion was the site of the marriage between Alexander Hamilton and Schuyler's daughter Elizabeth. On August 7, 1781, Native Americans raided the mansion in an unsuccessful Loyalist attempt to kidnap Schuyler.
After Philip Schuyler's death in 1804, the land comprised over one hundred building lots which were divided among his numerous children. From 1886 to 1913, the mansion served as an orphanage until the state assumed ownership.
It was restored and dedicated as an historic monument on October 17, 1917.
Read more about this topic: Schuyler Mansion
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)