Daily News from New York, New York • 304

8 MB 4 4 iftf 5 4 By JOHN LEWIS 'I iff? ipni 1 1 i Photo CourMy Nm-Vwfc HMortal SocMy Gracle Mansion appeared somewhat bleak in this Jan. 1, 1904, photo. E33 1 I mi ill 1. By 1928, restoration of the mansion was under way, and this is how it was envisioned by water color artist Rudolph Bunner. In September 1776, the British bom barded the-fortress and leveled Walton's house The following day.

Thompson's Battery was captured by' the British, who remained there until the end of the war in November 1783, when the. British forces evacuated New York. Before the attack, a British officer, Alexander Robertson, drew some excellent sketches of the fortress and Walton's house, which are on display in the exhibit GRACIE BOUGHT the property in 1798, and some time afterwards, he began building a country house on the. Site. By this time, the upper East Side already was beginning to attract the well-heeled.

Near by were the Astor and Rhinelander Estates. In 1819, Gracie, who had lost a fortune in shipping because of the war between England and France, sold th house to Rufus King, the father-in-law of Gracie's two daughters. Four years King sold the mansion to Joseph Foulke for a mere $20,500. Obviously delighted with his purchase, Foulke remained in the house until his death in 1857, leaving the property to his children. Noah Wheaton, a merchant dealing in wallpaper and blinds, bought the house in 1879.

By 1801, the mansion and its surrounding 12V acres had fallen into such disrepair that the city condemned the property. In 1911, the land to the south, which had been called East River Park, was renamed Carl Schurz Park, after the Civil War abolitionist and Union Army soldier. The mansion went through a series of uses, such as being a refreshment pavillion where ke cream was sold, a comfort station, and then an office and storage space for the Parks a Department IN 1922, the newly chartered Museum of the City of New York, moved into Gracie Mansion, but so the story goes, when nobody showed up at the museum, it was moved to Fifth Ave. near Central Park. During the years that followed, periodic restoration and refurbishing of portions of the mansion were done.

When the East River Drive was being built in 1941, the mansion and surrounding grounds were raised several feet to accommodate the drive. The grounds were restored to their original contours. It was at this point that Parks Commissioner Robert Moses ordered a complete restoration of the Gracie Mansion site, using workers from the federal Works Progress Administration. He also requested that the Board of Estimate designate the mansion as the -official home of the mayor. On May 28, 1942, Mayor LaGuardia moved into the mansion, and since then it has been the home of Mayors William O'Dwyer, Vincent Impellitteri, Robert Wagner, John Lindsay, Abraham Beame, and Edward Koch.

During Wagner's term, his wife, Susan, proposed that a wing be added to the mansion. She died in 1964 while the wing was being built On Sept 27, 1966, the new wing was opened, and it was named in her memory. A week later, Gracie Mansion was designated a New York City Landmark, and on May 12, 1975, it was entered on the National Register of Historic Places. ON 1646, A Dutchman named Sybout Claessen. was given a grant to a beautiful tract of land on the outskirts of New, Amsterdam called Hoorn Hook named after Claessen's home town in.

Holland which looked across the turbulent waters of Hell Gate to the gentle rolling countryside that later was to become the Bronx and Queens: Hoorn Hook is now Carl Schurz Park, and on the site stands Gracie Mansion, built in 1811 by Colonial merchant Archibald Gracie, and since 1942, when Fiorello LaGuardia moved in, it has been the official home of New York City mayors. "THE MAYOR'S HOUSE: Gracie Mansion and Other Dwellings," is the subject of a new exhibition that opened last week at the New-York Historical Society, Central Park West and 77th St It consists of more than 200 paintings, photographs, maps, diaries, drawings, furnishings, and documents, tracing the course of history in New York that led to the building of City Hall and Gracie Mansion "The Home of New York City Mayors." Since 1662, New York City has had 105 mayors. Seven of them have lived in Gracie Mansion. Before 1942, there was no official residence, and New York mayors had to use their own' homes for official business and -entertainment. Thomas Willett was New York City's' first mayor.

His homestead has been, long lost to posterity, but his cemetery; headstone still stands in Providence, R. Willet's original home town DESPITE NUMEROUS building booms and other changes that have taken; place on the upper East Side, in 335 years of recorded history, there have been fewer than 15 owners of the Gracie Mansion- site, and only two houses have ever stood on that open stretch of land from 84th to 90th Sts. along East End Ave. In fact, Gracie Mansion, with its, surrounding grounds, is the last of the great country estates that still exists in Manhattan. Mary Black, the curator of the New-York Historical Society's exhibit, said that while Gracie Mansion was being built uptown, City Hall was being constructed downtown, forming a kind of "mayoral axis" between upper and lower Among the items on display in the exhibit are original documents and bills which reveal that City Hall was built for the sum of $498,634.31, a fraction of what it would cost today.

There also are original drawings of City Hall by architect John McComb, ournals, and bills and orders for items such as marble and other materials used in its construction. HOORN'S HOOK, meanwhile, had changed hands in 1770 when Loyalist merchant Jacob Walton purchased the property and promptly built a lovely house there, which he called, appropriately, "Belview." Six years later, at the start of the Revolutionary War, Gen: George Washington ordered, a fortress constructed on the site to protect Manhattan from the attacking British Army. The fortress was called, "Thompson's Battery." I I. Archibald Gracie. Daughter-in-law, Mrs.

William Gracie -MW. JAV vfC? Xf -t Looking south from Hoorn's Hook in 1861, the Hell Gate Ferry, which transported travelers from E. 86th St. "to Astoria..