Miramont Court/Brandywine, the Estate of Isaac Newton Spiegelberg. Notebook 2025-3 — Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society

Isaac Newton Spiegelberg was born in 1859. His family were wholesale clothing merchants who had done well during the Civil War. Although born in the USA he was educated in Germany. Trained as an engineer, he worked for a while on Switzerland’s St. Gotthard Railway. He eventually returned to the US, where he worked on the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, mostly in Oklahoma. In 1884 he moved away from engineering and took up brokerage with the firm of J & W Seligman. His “keen business judgement…combined with his high sense of honor in all businesses as well as personal relationships soon won him recognition as one of the leading brokers of Wall Street. In 1886 he purchased s seat on the New York Stock exchange…and began to trade independently” 1. He was a member of Temple Emanu-El in New York City, where he also maintained a residence.

In 1909, he built a large (forty-nine room) mansion in the then popular Tudor Revival style on around twenty acres off Sleepy Hollow Road in Briarcliff Manor. He named it “Miramont Court” (Spiegel-mirror, Berg-Mountain).

Although no longer in use and surrounded by a chain link fence, the house still stands as part of the Briarcliff Manor Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing Care.

His wife, Sarah Spiegelberg was an avid theater fan, amateur singer and hostess. Legend has it that she invited many celebrities of the day, including Charlie Chaplain and Enrico Caruso to spend time at the estate. Miramont Court turned into a movie set in the summer of 1919, when Mrs. Spiegelberg invited a movie production company (D.W.Griffith) to film there. Marion Davies, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and Betty Compton were among the stars who made such movies as “High Speed” and “Love, Honor and Obey” at the estate in the summer of 1924. 2.

Spiegelberg passed away in 1927. About a year later his heirs sold the estate to Mrs. Ethel Du Pont Barksdale, from Delaware. The Barksdales purchased additional land and built an artist’s studio (some family members were artists). They also remodeled the interior of the house and added a greenhouse, and kennels. Importantly, they renamed the estate “Brandywine”. Mrs. Barksdale, with her daughter and son-in-law, John Dublois Wack, lived there until well into the 1930s. The estate was then sold to the Briarcliff Development Corporation. It served for a while as a research laboratory which produced a rust-resistant paint used by the military in WWII. 2.

In 1945 Edward Walker Harden (who had previously lived in Tarrytown) bought a property in Briarcliff Manor between Long Hill Road West and Sleepy Hollow Road: right next to Spiegelberg’s Miramont Court. Joseph Ulman, a stockbroker had previously owned the property. He had built a group of cabins in the Adirondack style connected by covered ramps. The Hardens removed all but one of these and built an Italian renaissance style stone mansion. He named the estate “The Wilderness”. In the 1980s the estate became the Rosecliff development.

“The Hardens ‘spared no expense in creating a lovely, homey place with parts from the Italian past” 3 The driveway and courtyard of the house were paved with Belgium cobblestones. Shortly after the house was build Rosemary Harden was married in the formal garden. Kay Courreges remembers ‘We were little kids. We all climbed up the tower at Brandywine to watch. It was a lovely wedding. The water tower at Brandywine at that time had a conical roof and a circular walkway commanding a sweeping view.”

The Hardens bought Brandywine from Mrs. Barksdale’s heirs in the 1930s and built a road to connect it to The Wilderness. Pierre Courreges became the superintendent of the combined estates.

But the Hardens never occupied “Miramont/Brandywine”. They preferred to live in “The Wilderness”.

Edward and his wife Ruth lived well into their 80s and are buried next to each other in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

The property changed hands again in 1951 when it went to the Smiths (identity unknown), and again in 1952 when it was purchased by Dr. David Richmond, a former Tarrytown resident who opened the mansion as The Brandywine Convalescent Home

Subsequently, a nursing home (The Brandywine Nursing Home) set up shop in the old Tudor house on the Brandywine section of the estate. On May 17, 1974 Brandywine Nursing home moved from the historic mansion to a new building next door (nowadays the “Briarcliff Manor Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing”. The mansion became an assisted living residence for seniors.

In 1986 “The Wilderness” was purchased by Briarmor Associates, who built 116 houses on the old estate and called the development “Rosecliff”. The former Harden mansion now functions as the “Rosecliff” community clubhouse.

The two photographs below of Rosecliff were taken by BMSHS Executive Director, Karen Smith in September 2013.

The former Spiegelberg house is now surrounded by a chain link fence and unoccupied. In 2012 a fire destroyed a former garage, but fortunately caused no other damage and there were no casualties.

The house has now been abandoned for some time and seems to be in a state of disrepair. However, as of January 24, 2025 it still seems to be for sale with an estimated price of 4 million dollars.

Below some exterior shots of Miramont Court/Brandywine as it looks today courtesy Howard Dale, BMSHS; as well as some recent (April 2021) interior shots courtesy of Mr. Luca Castagno, who has graciously given us permission to use them on this site. For more of his photographs (including some more from Miramont Court/Brandywine) see his excellent site: LCs Archives of Lost History.

It’s a great pity that the house has been abandoned for so long, and allowed to deteriorate. It must have been quite something in its heyday. As Mary Cheever describes in “The Changing Landscape, a history of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough”

“Miramont Court was the summer residence of Spiegelberg, his wife Stella, and their children Marie and Stanley.

Outbuildings, including a seventy-five-foot-water tower, and plantings form a courtyard around the façade of the house. From the porte-cochere an entryway leads directly into the “great hall”, which is wood paneled, with a large fireplace and set into the ceiling in terra cotta the initials of the Spiegelbergs, I.N.S. and S.F. (Stella Friedlander) S. To the right is the Music Room, in which there were a stage with a piano on it; an organ; a big window with seats cushioned in red velvet; a small balcony in the back; and seated on an overhang around the ceiling, child-size cast or carved and painted cherubs with their feet crossed, looking down. Many concerts and theatricals took place and special occasions were celebrated in the Music Room, including the marriage of the Spiegelbergs’ daughter Marie to Alan Harcourt Black.

Spiegelberg took great pleasure in the gardens there. Pierre Courreges was superintendent of the estate, and his daughter Kay, who grew up there, remembers the large flower and vegetable gardens and the arbors of “special” grapes from which her father made wine. Courreges was assisted at all times by at least three other gardeners. Many plants were imported for the gardens, mostly from Japan, because local nurseries were comparatively undeveloped at that time. The house had a grand view – from the lawn and tennis courts in the foreground, across the gardens, a vineyard, a pond and a strip of woodland, to the Hudson River and the hills of Rockland County on the horizon. On fine afternoons Stella Spiegelberg took tea in a treehouse in the garden. She had to climb steep steps up into the treehouse, but there was a dumbwaiter to convey the tea and accompanying delicacies to there (told by Frank Vanderlip Jr.). 3.”

1. The National Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York, 1944. Volume XXI, page 493

2. The Brandywine Mansion, formerly Miramont Court: A Living Historical Home. Draft by Roslyn and Paul Roth in BMSHS files.

3. Conversations with Kay Courreges and Frank Vanderlip Jr. mentioned in “The Changing Landscape, a history of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough, Briarcliff Manor, Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society, 1990.

Sources:

“The Changing Landscape, a history of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough”, Briarcliff Manor, Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society, 1990

Brandywine Estate, Briarcliff Manor on Ossining History on the Run Local History Seen from a Runner's Perspective.

Conversations with Kay Courreges and Frank Vanderlip Jr. recorded in “The Changing Landscape, a history of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough”

BMSHS files related to Isaac Newton Spiegelberg and The Harden Family.

LC’s Archives of Lost History. Brandywine Estate. Contains some beautiful recent (April 2021) photographs of the interior of Brandywine by Luca Castagno who has graciously allowed to use some of them on this site.