36 Main St, Roslyn, NY, 11576

Cedarmere

225 Bryant Avenue, Roslyn Harbor

Date Built1787
Original UseResidence
Restoration StatusCompleted Restoration Date2005
Roslyn Landmark Society Covenant No
View House Tour Details 2005
National Register of Historic Places

Project Files

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Best known at the home of the prominent 19th century poet and newspaper editor, William Cullen Bryant, Cedarmere was one of the oldest houses in Roslyn Harbor when Bryant purchased it in 1843. Richard Kirk, a Quaker farmer who also ran a fulling mill on the property, constructed the original section of the building in 1787. Described as being particularly well-built, the Kirk house was a two-and-a-half story frame structure with an attic, basement and adjoining kitchen dependency. The house featured a Georgian plan with a central hall flanked by two rooms on each side. The wood-shingled gambrel roof had a wide overhang on all four sides of the building, causing one subsequent homeowner to nickname the house "the brown hat."

By the 1830s, William Hicks, the Hempstead Harbor postmaster, had acquired the Kirk property. Several months later, a happenstance visit led William Hicks to sell the property to Joseph Moulton, a New York City attorney and amateur historian. After becoming lost as they were traveling through Hempstead Harbor, Moulton and his wife stopped to ask directions at Hicks's house. As it was getting late, Mr. Hicks, noting that Mrs. Moulton was looking tired, invited the couple to "tarry with us tonight and get a fresh start in the morning." The Moultons were so taken with the house and its site

overlooking the harbor, they purchased it from Hicks in September 1834. The Moultons made the first major changes to the house, adding a large colonnade on three sides of the house. Square columns supported a heavy Greek Revival cornice. After abandoning his scheme to establish a planned community called Montrose on the property, Moulton sold the house and adjoining forty acres to William Cullen Bryant in 1843.

Over the next thirty-five years of ownership, Bryant made several changes to the property. In 1856, he remodeled the kitchen wing, creating servants' quarters on the second floor above the kitchen. From 1860-67, Bryant made the most extensive changes at Cedarmere, hiring a "troop of carpenters" to totally remodel the house. Bryant added a third story and attic topped with a gambrel roof and three gambrel-roofed dormers on each side. Graceful lattice-work columns supported covered verandas on the south, east and north sides, replacing Mr. Moulton's piazza. In order to capitalize on his view of the harbor, Bryant placed bay windows on the first floor rooms along the south and west sides. He also installed a hot-air central heating system. To the east of the kitchen, Bryant added a carriage-way with a storeroom above and a threestory, gambrel-roofed pear tower. The entire house was painted cream with contrasting accents of brown. In 1874, Bryant engaged Thomas Wisedell, a talented English architect working for Calvert Vaux to upgrade Cedarmere's plumbing system.

As a naturalist, Bryant embellished the grounds of Cedarmere with extensive gardens, greenhouses and outbuildings. The parterre gardens were laid-out in the 1860s and have been restored to their 1870 appearance. Roslyn carpenter Washington Losee constructed the small, rustic too shed off the northwest corner in 1864. A brick ice house, dairy and fruitery to the north of the main house was constructed in 1867 although it was converted to a servants garage in the 1920s.

Certainly, the focal point of the grounds is the mill. Cedarmere has been the site of a mill since the 1770s when Richard Kirk constructed a water-powered fulling mill near the site of the current mill. Bryant erected the current Gothic Revival-style structure in 1862 to serve as a mill and a summer cottage. The mill works are in the lower level and were powered by an overshot waterwheel until 1885, when Bryant's daughter Julia replaced the wheel with a turbine drive. In addition to providing a power source for the lathes, saws, grindstones and other tools needed on the estate, the mill also pumped water from the spring-fed pond to a reservoir on the hill on the opposite side of Bryant Avenue that served as the water supply for the estate.

Following Bryant's death in 1878, Cedarmere passed to his younger daughter, Julia who sold the property to her nephew, Harold Godwin in 1891. W. Butler Duncan, a noted yachtsman, was renting the house from Godwin in November 1902 when a fire broke out in the kitchen wing. Cedarmere almost burned to the ground. Only the basement and the first floor fa9ade, hallway, parlor and study remained. Immediately, Godwin rebuilt the home in a very similar style and floor plan, moving in with his wife and family in 1903. After the death of Harold Godwin's widow in 1951, their daughters Elizabeth Love Godwin purchased Cedarmere from her parents' estate. At her death in 1975, she left Cedarmere to Nassau County to preserve the house and grounds as a memorial to William Cullen Bryant. The house and grounds are being restored by the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation and Museums.

On the afternoons of the house tours, visitors to Cedarmere can meet William Cullen Bryant in a special first person interpretation sponsored by the museum.

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The Cedarmere historic marker was installed on February 24, 2013.

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The Press Club of Long Island historic marker.

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