railings to the equally grand dining room on the second floor.
Through the Venetian windows and out on the balcony, they could see Burr’s dominion: Sweeping down several hundred feet from the mansion, there stretched a broad lawn,ranks of ancient oaks and basswood, and the wintry outline ofa fine flower garden enclosed by hedges; beyond that lay Lispenard’s Meadow. On a clear and cold winter’s day, one could see out to the Hudson River.The more modest creek curling around the north side of the hill, Minetta Brook, wasan ancient boundary line that Dutch settlers had dubbed Bestaver’s Killetje. For grounds that still appeared unspoiled, Richmond Hill looked over a long history indeed.
Colonel Burr had his own past with this mansion, long before he’d purchased it. He’d first set foot in Richmond Hill as a liberating soldier, scarcely twenty years old. Once the estate of a Loyalist, it wasseized in 1776 as Washington’s headquarters for the New York campaign—and in it, an impetuous young Burr served alongside Alexander Hamilton as one of Washington’s aides-de-camp. Like Hamilton’s, Burr’s promise as an officer was immediately apparent. The orphaned grandson of powerful revival preacher Jonathan Edwards, he’d inherited the old man’s fierce intelligence and magnetism, and he arrived at Richmond Hill already a war hero. He made his name at just nineteen in thedoomed Battle of Quebec; before the war was over he wouldwinter at Valley Forge with Washington and have his horse shot out from under him at the Battle of Monmouth. In the years since, he’d risen to great prominence, able to buy the mansion that he’d once so admired as a young soldier. It was at Richmond Hill that young Burr and Hamilton first surveyed the great expanse of Manhattan and wondered how to wrest control of the country from the British. Now—as rival lawyers and politicians—they wondered how they might wrest that control from each other.
Burr seemed curiously preoccupied that year, though, with the prosaic question of municipal water—with the very creeks and wells that his mansion overlooked.
“Pipes for the conveyance of Water have been laid in different streets to the extent of a Mile & upwards,” he explained to one stockholder. As chair of the Manhattan Company, Burr oversaw the efforts back in the summer to find a usable spring. The Manhattan Well had been a promising candidate—until they tried to use it. “The Machine for raising Water performs perfectly what was promised,” he explained, “but we are embarrassed with quicksand which is drawn up in such quantities as to choak the pumps every hour.”
They’d turned to the old Colles Well nearby instead, and the Manhattan Well quietly disappeared into obscurity. To have any of his wells associated with a murder was the last thing Burr needed for his new company, or as a respectable squire of the meadows. He had trouble enough already. While his home was a magnificently bombastic Ionic marvel from the outside—“one of those Grecian temples built of two-inch pine planks,” as one visitor put it—all was not well within.
Just a few months earlier, the colonel had quietly inserted a notice into
Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser:
RICHMOND HILL.
TO BE LET , and immediate possession, the House and Farm, adjoining Lispenards, formerly the property of Mr. Abraham Mortier; any quantity of land, from five to fifty acres, will be let with the house. The Garden is in complete order, and great forwardness, and the 16 room house well filled. Enquire at 221, Broadway.
A. BURR .
He found no takers. It was not for lack of prestige: Between Washington’s and Burr’s tenancy, the house had been occupied by then–vice president Adams; his wife, Abigail, adored the home, calling it “a situation where the hand of nature has so lavishly displayed her beauties that she has left scarcely anything for her handmaid, art, to perform.” Yet for all of Abigail’s praise and the
Through the Venetian windows and out on the balcony, they could see Burr’s dominion: Sweeping down several hundred feet from the mansion, there stretched a broad lawn,ranks of ancient oaks and basswood, and the wintry outline ofa fine flower garden enclosed by hedges; beyond that lay Lispenard’s Meadow. On a clear and cold winter’s day, one could see out to the Hudson River.The more modest creek curling around the north side of the hill, Minetta Brook, wasan ancient boundary line that Dutch settlers had dubbed Bestaver’s Killetje. For grounds that still appeared unspoiled, Richmond Hill looked over a long history indeed.
Colonel Burr had his own past with this mansion, long before he’d purchased it. He’d first set foot in Richmond Hill as a liberating soldier, scarcely twenty years old. Once the estate of a Loyalist, it wasseized in 1776 as Washington’s headquarters for the New York campaign—and in it, an impetuous young Burr served alongside Alexander Hamilton as one of Washington’s aides-de-camp. Like Hamilton’s, Burr’s promise as an officer was immediately apparent. The orphaned grandson of powerful revival preacher Jonathan Edwards, he’d inherited the old man’s fierce intelligence and magnetism, and he arrived at Richmond Hill already a war hero. He made his name at just nineteen in thedoomed Battle of Quebec; before the war was over he wouldwinter at Valley Forge with Washington and have his horse shot out from under him at the Battle of Monmouth. In the years since, he’d risen to great prominence, able to buy the mansion that he’d once so admired as a young soldier. It was at Richmond Hill that young Burr and Hamilton first surveyed the great expanse of Manhattan and wondered how to wrest control of the country from the British. Now—as rival lawyers and politicians—they wondered how they might wrest that control from each other.
Burr seemed curiously preoccupied that year, though, with the prosaic question of municipal water—with the very creeks and wells that his mansion overlooked.
“Pipes for the conveyance of Water have been laid in different streets to the extent of a Mile & upwards,” he explained to one stockholder. As chair of the Manhattan Company, Burr oversaw the efforts back in the summer to find a usable spring. The Manhattan Well had been a promising candidate—until they tried to use it. “The Machine for raising Water performs perfectly what was promised,” he explained, “but we are embarrassed with quicksand which is drawn up in such quantities as to choak the pumps every hour.”
They’d turned to the old Colles Well nearby instead, and the Manhattan Well quietly disappeared into obscurity. To have any of his wells associated with a murder was the last thing Burr needed for his new company, or as a respectable squire of the meadows. He had trouble enough already. While his home was a magnificently bombastic Ionic marvel from the outside—“one of those Grecian temples built of two-inch pine planks,” as one visitor put it—all was not well within.
Just a few months earlier, the colonel had quietly inserted a notice into
Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser:
RICHMOND HILL.
TO BE LET , and immediate possession, the House and Farm, adjoining Lispenards, formerly the property of Mr. Abraham Mortier; any quantity of land, from five to fifty acres, will be let with the house. The Garden is in complete order, and great forwardness, and the 16 room house well filled. Enquire at 221, Broadway.
A. BURR .
He found no takers. It was not for lack of prestige: Between Washington’s and Burr’s tenancy, the house had been occupied by then–vice president Adams; his wife, Abigail, adored the home, calling it “a situation where the hand of nature has so lavishly displayed her beauties that she has left scarcely anything for her handmaid, art, to perform.” Yet for all of Abigail’s praise and the
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