What a gem! When House Crazy Sarah heard about this place, she knew she had to feature it on her blog.
The only surviving farmhouse in Manhattan?
Over 230 years old?? Tucked among multi-story apartment buildings and the hustle and bustle of big city life???
This place is remarkable!
What’s truly astonishing is that this pre-civil war farmhouse even still exists in a city of the most valuable real estate in the nation.
But yes, at the corner of Broadway and West 204th street, there is a lucky relic of the past. Lucky because she had the fortitude and the forward-thinking owners to preserve her amidst some of the most aggressive and relentless development in the world.
The two-story Dutch Colonial Farmhouse was built by Dutch settlers – the Dyckman family – on what was then rural land in 1784. The original property was comprised of 250 acres upon which the Dyckman’s built fruit orchards and a cider mill.
Today, the Gambrel-roofed house still sits perched on a small hill, proudly comfortable in her place in history.
Interestingly, the first Dyckman farmhouse on this property – thought to date back to the 1660’s – was destroyed during the Revolutionary war and the house we see today was rebuilt from those ruins in 1785. So her roots go back even further than her walls are old.
The home was in the Dyckman family up until 1868 when it was sold. It was later purchased back by members of the Dyckman family who restored the property to her original state and opened it up as an old house museum in 1916.
There are many black and white photos of this historic home that show the city growing up around her.
Today, the farmhouse is a museum run by the City of New York and it is filled with artifacts and Dyckman family treasures that have been preserved for centuries.
When House Crazy Sarah goes to New York City, never mind Times Square and all that hoopla, she will be visiting the Dyckman house!
Let’s have a look inside this old gal…
The home has two parlors and the first serves as the reception desk for the museum. The other is filled with Dyckman family mementos.
The Dyckman House has both a summer kitchen above garden level:
And a subterranean winter kitchen in the basement:
The upstairs bedrooms:
Love those wide-planked wood floors!
It is so amazing that this historic home has now been an old house museum for over 100 years.
Talk about homestead holdouts!
Sources:
messynessychic.com/2018/03/13/manhattans-last-farmhouse
www.thevintagenews.com/2019/08/26/manhattan-farmhouse
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Very cool.