out of the Jay family and switched hands several times, from Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb, to Dutch financier Warner M. Van Norden and eventually to Princeton philanthropist Edgar Palmer and his wife Zilph. One can picture leather-goggled F. Scott Fitzgerald dandies and beaded flapper Zeldas motoring by in their Renaults, wheeling down the Westchester Turnpike, maps in hand, necks craned for a glimpse of this Gatsbyesque abode. In 1938, under Roosevelt’s NewDeal, Rye’s most famous son and his bucolic home were rendered anew by modernist painter Guy Pene Du Bois. Edward Hopper’s “best friend in art” limned a stylized public mural for the local Post Office. Titled "John Jay At Home", the work has the same film-noir palette of smoky green and cherry brown hues as
president, never shot, never entangled in a love affair), the land that anchored a peacemaker, at a time when we desperately needed to value social justice and teach diplomacy, almost vanished. Almost. Led by a handful of spirited, visionary women, over 62 historic and environmental organizations, together with John Jay’s direct descendants, formed the Jay Coalition. In
why he would always need them. Blackmun remains the only Supreme Court Justice to ever visit Jay’s gravesite. The Jay Coalition succeeded. Twenty five years ago, the 23 acre remnant of the once vast “Family Seat” was preserved using tools that Jay himself might have admired: civic advocacy, public engagement, and legal discourse.The laborious process protected the estate’s neighbors as well. One year after the Jay site was secured, it and the surrounding four properties that were all originally part of John Jay’s family holdings in Rye were recognized by the National Parks Service
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Nighthawks. Jay is pictured bidding farewell (again) to his wife Sarah and children as a groom prepares his horse to set out on the rocky Boston Post Road. And in 1940, America’s 150th commemoration of the first sitting of the US Supreme Court “directed particular prominence to Rye Village, since it was here that John Jay, first Chief Justice, lived for many years and is buried.” Cognizant of the national and local importance of the landmark in their care, the Jay
Estate’s last private owners, Zilph Palmer and Walter Devereux sought to protect the site in perpetuity by donating it to the Methodist Church in 1966. Editors of the Rye Chronicle shared misgivings from area residents about the transaction and opined that “This historic shrine should remain inviolate.” The Methodist Church used the site as a conference center but then sold the choice parcel to a developer in 1979. Suddenly, the Jay Estate and the integrity of its surroundings were at the precipice of dissolution. Like Jay, whose many accomplishments had been overlooked (some would argue because he was never
1987, they invited Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun to Rye to help remind the public and government officials that the Jay Estate mattered. Blackmun said, “It was a place that struck me then as symbolic of what was impressive about certain aspects of the latter part of the eighteenth century – gracious living and status, to be sure, but coupled with a sense of responsibility, particularly to government and to the art of getting along together.” He touched the three bullet marks on Jay’s tombstone fired by a man distraught over FDR’s plan to stack the Supreme Court back in 1937, turned to his Secret Service bodyguards and acknowledged that that was
(NPS) and elevated to National Historic Landmark (NHL) status. In 1993, with the Jay Estate as the keystone, the Parsons Estate (also known as Lounsbury), the private and serene Jay Cemetery, Whitby Castle/ Rye Golf Club with its turreted Alexander Jackson Davis masterpiece, and Marshlands Conservancy, an important wildlife habitat and one of the oldest undisturbed archaeological sites in all CLOCKWISE FROMTOP: REAR PIAZZA; EAGLE SCOUT CHRISTOPHER PARKER AND VOLUNTEERS SUPERVISED BY DR. EUGENE BOESCH UNCOVERED 17TH AND 18TH CENTURY ARTIFACTS LIKELY FROM THE JAY HOME, "THE LOCUSTS," THIS PAST AUGUST; RESTORED PIAZZA AT JAY DAY.
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