page_title: Briarcliff Manor, New York
section_title: Historic
hierarchical_section_title: Briarcliff Manor, New York / Notable people / Historic
caption_attribution_description: English: Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry
context_page_description: Briarcliff Manor is a suburban village in Westchester County, New York, around 30 miles north of New York City. It is on 5.9 square miles of land on the east bank of the Hudson River, geographically shared by the towns of Mount Pleasant and Ossining. Briarcliff Manor includes the communities of Scarborough and Chilmark, and is served by the Scarborough station of the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line. A section of the village, including buildings and homes covering 376 acres, is part of the Scarborough Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The village motto is "A village between two rivers", reflecting Briarcliff Manor's location between the Hudson and Pocantico Rivers. Although the Pocantico is the primary boundary between Mount Pleasant and Ossining, since its incorporation the village has spread into Mount Pleasant.
  In the precolonial era, the village's area was inhabited by a band of the Wappinger tribes of Native Americans. In the early 19th century, the area was known as Whitson's Corners. Walter William Law moved to the area and purchased lands during the 1890s.
context_section_description: Briarcliff Manor was historically known for its wealthy estate-owning families, including the Rockefellers, Astors, and Macys. Many of the extended Rockefeller family lived in and around the neighboring area of Pocantico Hills, and William Rockefeller (brother of John D. Rockefeller) lived for some time at Edgehill, his house in Scarborough. U.S. Naval Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who opened Japan to the West, resided for years in Scarborough and was one of the founders of Saint Mary's Episcopal Church, and donated a bell he captured in Tabasco, Mexico to the church in 1847. Captain Alexander Slidell Mackenzie also lived in Scarborough. Businessman William Henry Aspinwall lived in Scarborough, and was sent to England during the American Civil War to prevent the construction of Confederate ironclad warships. He was involved in the Panama Canal; Panama's second-largest city (now known as Colón) was named Aspinwall after him by emigrants from the U.S., and Aspinwall Road in Scarborough was later named after him. John Lorimer Worden, a U.S. Navy rear admiral who commanded the USS Monitor against the CSS Virginia during the Battle of Hampton Roads, was born at Rosemont in Scarborough. Carrie Chapman Catt, a pioneer in the campaign for women's suffrage (president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women), lived at Juniper Ledge during the 1920s. Carle Cotter Conway, a resident of Linden Circle, was president of the Continental Can Company for 33 years. Banker and businessman James Speyer lived at Waldheim, an estate in Scarborough, with his family. William J. Burns was the penultimate director of the Bureau of Investigation; his successor, J. Edgar Hoover, transformed the agency into the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Burns established a private-investigation service, the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, and his family moved to Shadowbrook, a house on Scarborough Road, in 1917. Frank DuMond lived in the village and was the art director of Briarcliff College. Christian Archibald Herter, a physician and pathologist, lived with his wife at the Edgehill estate; he worked at a separate laboratory building on the property. William Woodward Baldwin, a lawyer and the ninth Third Assistant Secretary of State, rented The Elms (a house in the village) from 1897 to 1926. Further on, Baldwin bought property in the village and built a bungalow, and later bought a concrete house on Pleasantville Road near the Briarcliff train station. He was a trustee of the Briarcliff Congregational Church and district board of education, counsel to the village government, and member of the Mount Pleasant Field Club (present-day Trump National Golf Club Westchester).
  Frank A. Vanderlip was president of the National City Bank of New York, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and a founder of the Federal Reserve System. He lived at the Beechwood estate and created the first Montessori school in the United States, the Scarborough School, nearby. Vanderlip also helped found and was the first president of Scarborough's Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Ella Holmes White and her partner Marie Grice Young lived in the Briarcliff Lodge, where an extension was built for them to reside. The two held a long-term lease there before they boarded the RMS Titanic and survived its sinking; they continued to live at the lodge until later in their lives. Marian Cruger Coffin, a landscape architect, was born and grew up in Scarborough. Emily Taft Douglas, a U.S. Representative and wife of Senator Paul Douglas, lived in Briarcliff Manor from 1986 to her death in 1994. Composer and conductor Aaron Copland, famous for Rodeo and Fanfare for the Common Man, began spending weekdays at Mary Churchill's house in Briarcliff Manor in early 1929, and had a post office box in Briarcliff Manor. He spent almost a month living there before moving to nearby Bedford; his ultimate residence is in nearby Cortlandt Manor. Brooke Astor, a philanthropist, socialite, and member of the Astor famil
caption: Commodore Matthew C. Perry
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