Horace Greeley House

Horace Greeley was a noted journalist and one of the most influential Americans of the mid-1800s. The Horace Greeley House in Chappaqua is one of three associated with Greeley, but the only one still extant. The Greeleys bought the house in 1864, a decade or so after purchasing an adjacent farm. Today the home is open to the public as a museum, and it also houses the headquarters of the New Castle Historical Society. The Horace Greeley House is included in The Greeley Heritage Landmarks in Chappaqua (Thematic Group), which were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in April 1979.

Horace Greeley was one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century. As founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, a leading periodical of the day, Greeley helped shape public opinion on the most important issues of the time, including slavery and westward expansion.

The Greeleys bought 78 acres of farmland in Chappaqua between 1852 and 1854, to serve as their summer estate. The family originally lived in a house at the southern end of the property that they called the "House in the Woods." After several years, Mary Greeley found it too dark, dank, and remote, so, in 1864, Greeley bought the property on the main street of the village, and enlarged and remodeled the existing house there. Although Greeley himself appreciated the solitude of the "House in the Woods" and continued to spend much of his time there, the rest of the family happily occupied the centrally located home for almost a decade.

In 1872 Greeley ran for President against Ulysses S. Grant. That fall, he suffered a triple tragedy. First, Mary died on October 30th, following a long illness. Second, a week later, he lost the election. Third, and most seriously, he discovered after returning to the Tribune that he had lost economic and editorial control of the paper. He then collapsed, mentally and physically, and died a month after his wife on November 29th, aged 61.

The Greeley daughters, Ida and Gabrielle, spent one more summer in the Main Street home, and then moved to a new dwelling on Senter Street, called the "Side Hill House," which their parents had recently built but hadn’t lived to occupy. The family never again lived in the Main Street house, but rented it out to a succession of tenants. After Ida died in 1882, Gabrielle became the sole heir to the Greeley properties, and made the "Side Hill House" her year-round residence. Meanwhile, the unoccupied "House in the Woods" had burned down in 1876, and the Side Hill House burned in 1890. Thus, the house on Main street (now King Street) became the only surviving residence of Horace Greeley himself.

In the 1940s, the house was transformed into the Greeley House gift shop. In 1998, it was acquired by the New Castle Historical Society and restored to its original appearance, based on contemporaneous prints. Reopened in 2000, it is now a historic house museum, open to the public, and it also houses the headquarters of the historical society. The Horace Greeley House is included in The Greeley Heritage Landmarks in Chappaqua (Thematic Group), which were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in April 1979.

1. Cleveland, Cecilia. The Story of a Summer: Journal Leaves from Chappaqua. New York: G.W. Carleton & Co., 1874; facsimile, Chappaqua, NY: New Castle Historical Society, 2003.
2. Chappaqua History Committee and Gray Williams. New Castle: Chappaqua and Millwood. “Images of America” series. Charleston, SC: Acadia Publishing, 2006.
3. “Horace Greeley House (Horace Greeley Thematic District), 79003212.” National Register of Historic Places. United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. 1974. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75315505 
4. Van Deusen, Glyndon G. Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953.
5. Williams, Gray. Horace Greeley and the Greeley Family in Chappaqua, Chappaqua, NY: New Castle Historical Society, 2016.
6. Williams, Gray. Picturing Our Past, National Register Sites in Westchester County, Elmsford, NY: Westchester County Historical Society, 2003.
7. Williams, Robert C. Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom, New York: New York University Press, 2006.