Philip Deyo House

The Philip Deyo House was the first home constructed in what is now the Bell Place-Locust Hill Avenue Historic District in Yonkers, NY. Completed in 1855, the house is in the Italianate architectural style popularized by renowned American architect A. J. Davis. Philip Deyo and other successful merchants and professionals built their residences in this particular area of Yonkers in the middle half of the nineteenth century for its proximity to businesses, transportation, and the Hudson River, located just a half mile to the west. The Philip Deyo House is one of eight homes remaining in the district (with one of these slated for demolition as of August 2022). The Bell Place-Locust Hill Avenue Historic District, including the Deyo House, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Philip A. Deyo was the original owner of the first home built in the community of what is now the Bell Place-Locust Hill Avenue Historic District. Deyo was a prosperous local merchant whose small grocery store expanded into a thriving coal, grain, and feed business. He was also a trustee and director of the Citizens National Bank and Peoples Savings Bank. According to his obituary, which ran in The Yonkers Gazette on September 13, 1890, Philip A. Deyo was a “widely known and highly esteemed resident of Yonkers.”

The Philip Deyo House, completed in 1855, was of the Italianate style popularized by renowned American architect Alexander Jackson Davis. Davis included a design of a similar house in his 1850 treatise Cottage Residences. The Philip Deyo House deviates from Davis’ original in its omission of an entrance tower and its substitution of round arched windows with bold enframements. The house also exhibits a columned bracketed veranda, and a shallow gable roof with wide, low cross gable. 

Although the neighborhood around it has changed immensely in the over one hundred and sixty years since the original construction, the house itself remains representative of a mid-nineteenth century middle-class dwelling. It harkens back to a time when this was the area where influential Yonkers residents who helped to transform the village into the large city. The Bell Place-Locust Hill Avenue Historic District, including the Philip Deyo house, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

1. “Bell Place - Locust Avenue Historic District #85001936.” National Register of Historic Places. United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. 1985. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75322957
2. “Necrology: Philip A. Deyo.” The Yonkers Gazette. Sept. 13, 1890. Yonkers, NY. https://ypl.newspapers.com/image/675816235/?terms=Necrology&match=1. Accessed Aug 2, 2022.
3. Rebic, Michael P., ed. James D. Keen, Doris B. Keen. Landmarks Lost & Found: An Introduction to the Architecture and History of Yonkers. Yonkers, NY: Yonkers Planning Bureau and the Yonkers Environmental Impact Advisory Commission. 1986.
4. Williams, Gray. Picturing Our Past: National Register Sites in Westchester County. Westchester County Historical Society. 2003.