Tilford House: Good Counsel Complex

The Tilford House was built in 1856 by the owner of White Plains Gas Company Eugene T. Preudhomme. In the early 1850s, Preudhomme bought fifteen acres of land on which he built the lovely Italianate house which gracefully sits on the high ground overlooking the adjacent land. 

The house has features of Romanesque and Mediterranean Revival Architecture, with its second-story wraparound veranda, stone walls, and slate shingles. Preudhomme owned the house for twenty-four years before selling the property in 1880 to John M. Tilford, one of the partners of Park and Tilford, a well-known grocery company in New York City. Tilford used the residence as a summer home until he sold it to Mother Mary Veronica of the Sisters of the Divine Compassion in 1890.

The sisters used the house as a convent and renamed it the Good Counsel farm, that same year they began building a school on the property named the House of Nazareth. This would be the first of many buildings that was built by the sisters, eventually making up the Good Counsel Complex that exists today. In 1895, the sisters moved the house some 700 feet East to make room for a Chapel, which now sits on the original site of the house. 

The house has been expanded and altered over the years, but the changes have respected the original Italianate style. Today, the property has about twelve other buildings that have been constructed over the years for various uses by the Sisters of the Divine Compassion. The property continued to serve the mission of the Sisters of the Divine Compassion educationally until they closed the doors of their Catholic high school and relocated the elementary school of the Good Counsel Academy in 2015.

At present, a condominium complex has been proposed for the property but would preserve the Tilford House.

1. Tilford House: Good Counsel Complex, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed October 22nd 2020.
2. "Good Counsel Academy High School to Close; Elementary School to Move." Catholic New York. Last modified February 18, 2015. https://www.cny.org/stories/good-counsel-academy-high-school-to-close-elementary-school-to-move,12238.
3. Williams, Gray. Jackson, Kenneth T.. Picturing Our Past: National Register Sites in Westchester. Edition 1st . Westchester County Historical Society.