Scarborough Historic District

The Scarborough Historic District is located in the unincorporated community of Scarborough-on-Hudson in Westchester County, NY, between the villages of Sleepy Hollow and Ossining. It encompasses 376 acres, straddling the towns of both Ossining and Mount Pleasant. In 1984, when the Scarborough Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it included three estates, one school complex, one cemetery, and two religious properties. In 1990, however, one of the estates, Rosemont, an 1840 Greek Revival property, was lost to demolition. The majority of the remaining properties in the Scarborough Historic District date to the mid-1800s and extend into the first half of the twentieth century. They represent an array of different architectural styles and serve as reminders of a time when the area was more rural and sparsely developed.

The name of the Scarborough Historic District is intertwined with the history of one of the properties located here: St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. There is a St. Mary’s Church in Scarborough, England, still standing in the same site where it was erected in the twelfth century, that served as the model for the 1851 Gothic construction that is its replica on Route 9 in Scarborough.

The other religious property in the Scarborough Historic District is the Scarborough Presbyterian Church complex, located on three acres near the intersection of Albany Post Road and Scarborough Road. It includes the church, the church house, the manse, and two carriage barns. The Renaissance-inspired construction dates to 1895 when its main church building was dedicated on May 4th.

Just north of the Scarborough Presbyterian Church is the Sparta Cemetery, located on approximately two acres of land that had once been part of the Manor of Philipsburg before it was gifted to local residents to be used for a church and burying ground. The earliest of the over one hundred gravestones dates to 1772. The church that stood next to the cemetery was severely damaged during the American Revolution and is no longer standing.

Beechwood, also in the Scarborough Historic District, was a Federal-syle estate, with its oldest buildings dating back to the last quarter of the eighteenth century. It once belonged to Frank and Narcissa Vanderlip, who had purchased it from Henry Walter Webb. Webb had pieced the estate together with a number of different buildings originally belonging to the Remsen, Webb, and Creighton families. As of 2022, it is in use as a condominium complex.

The former Scarborough School in the Scarborough Historic District was constructed in 1917 in the neo-classical architectural style. It was commissioned by Frank and Narcissa Vanderlip for the education of their own children and children from the surrounding area. It was sold in 1981 to Clear View, a school offering academic and therapeutic programs for students living with mental illness and emotional disabilities.

The Sleepy Hollow Country Club in the district was originally known as “Woodlea,” where Elliott Fitch Shepard and Margaret (Vanderbilt) Shepard built a Renaissance-Revival residence designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. Within fifteen years of its completion, it was purchased by Frank and Narcissa Vanderlip, who quickly sold it to the newly formed Sleepy Hollow Country Club, which continues to own and run it as of 2022.

1. Cheever, Mary. The Changing Landscape: A History of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough. Phoenix Publishing, West Kennebunk, Maine, for the Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society. 1990
2. Clear View School website. https://clearviewschool.org/our-property/
3. Fetonti, Bob. “Beechwood Vol 1.1.” Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society. March 1, 2018. https://www.briarcliffhistory.org/the-briarcliff-notebook/beechwood-vol-11. 
4. “Scarborough Historic District #84003433.” National Register of Historic Places. United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. 1984. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/84003433
5. Sleepy Hollow Country Club. http://sleepyhollowcc.org.
6. Williams, Gray. Picturing Our Past: National Register Sites in Westchester County. Westchester County Historical Society. 2003.