Spann House

History

At the time Spann House Warburton was being completed, the suburbanization of Westchester County was well under way. The move to the suburbs of Westchester County was driven by the desire to retreat from the heat, disease, dirt and racial conflict of New York City. The wealthy mostly white, rich Protestants moved first, creating large holiday homes. The legend of these houses and the lifestyle they eschewed, the promotion of a seemingly agrarian family life as an ideal, invited the interest of the middle class; the development of the Hudson River Railroad in 1851 along the east side of the Hudson River facilitated their participation in the creation of the new suburbs—"a bourgeois utopia" in the words of one historian. Olmstead and Vaux created a detailed design for a planned housing development called Tarrytown in 1871. They designed picturesque wooden homes with asymmetrical volumes, porches, turrets, mansard roofs with dormers and large bay windows. Though less ornate, their houses reflected the exuberant second Empire and Queen Anne styles that was the dominant characteristic of the mansions of the wealthy in Westchester at the time. Obviously, they appealed to the aspirational tastes of their target occupants judging from the voracious manner in which they were consumed. Other middle class housing developments in Westchester County were built in that manner. On Warburton Avenue particularly, around 1897 when Spann house was built, a company called Harriman and Hawley developed numerous asymmetrical homes with wood or shingle siding over brick or cement, each with a front porch, bay windows and large turret.
Many of the privately developed homes were also built in this style and were remarkably similar, seemingly prescribing to the idea of "homogeneity as a backlash against perceived cacophony in urban life". Spann House was built in 1897 for Isaac Osgood Carleton. Unlike his neighbors his house had an all stone structure, a simple form and basic dormered gable roof, which seemed an Active Design departure at a time when wood construction was cheaper and more popular than stone. However Like most other male residents in the area he worked in New York City, in now defunct import/export business he co-owned called Carleton & Moffatt . In essence, he moved to Yonkers, fleeing New York for the relative bucolic of the suburbs. The fear that New York City's chaos and diversity would encroach into the new idyllic suburbs was exacerbated by the annexation of sections of Westchester County to New York City in 1898. It was made manifest by the gusto with which many towns created and enforced zoning codes.

By 1931 every suburb in Westchester County was zoned with strict laws that established residential and class boundaries. Spann House fell just within the boundary of the City of Yonkers and just without the wealthier suburb of Hastings. In 1931 this urban area was designated zone A – apartment houses high density by the City of Yonkers. Because of its size Spann House was easily converted to a multifamily residence that year. Many of the other single family residences were left in disrepair, as their owners died or moved to richer more culturally monolithic suburbs just north. In the 1970s a rash of development surrounded Spann House with cost efficient multi-story 'luxury' apartment buildings. Between 1970 and 1975 one development company alone built 5 apartment buildings within a mile of Spann House. This boom coincided with the decline of New York City's quality of life that decade. Again the upper middle classes were fleeing the city's class and racial conflict disease and dirt . During the boom years of the late 1990s and 2000s – coincidentally one century since the original development boom in the area- there was a major influx of new middle class residents. These transplants were interested in the same idyllic experience of the suburbs prescribed by the developers of Westchester a century before. As such, Victorian houses many abandoned or badly maintained, were being bought up by the new upper middle class professionals who worked in New York City's exploding service industry.

People who could not afford houses in the area participated in the suburban ideal by purchasing or renting apartments in the new multi-story luxury apartments being built along Warburton Avenue to feed their demand. In 1999 Kathryn Spann a Lawyer in New York, purchased Spann house- a dilapidated but functioning apartment building. She purchased it from the estate of a Mr. Sanislav Kira a carpenter of Ukrainian descent who specialized in high-end church furniture. She maintained its multi-family designation to offset the enormous cost of purchasing and renovating the building. Zoning and the economy would again, play a major role in the population demographics and density of the area. By the time Kathryn Spann purchased Spann House, at least 3 major residential projects were being built or approved for future development within half a mile it. The owners of the single- family houses in the area grew progressively dissatisfied with the increasing population density and its effect on the limited infrastructure. As a result, the River Community Coalition of Yonkers was formed. Spurred by a series of mishaps resulting from large-scale construction in the area, In 2009 Kathryn Spann wrote a lawsuit on behalf of River Community Coalition. The letter was sent to the Deputy Commissioner for Planning & Development, the Chairman of the Yonkers planning board and the Planning Director for Yonkers. It called for an environmental impact statement to address the significant impacts the construction of 353 units on a steeply sloped site on Warburton Avenue would have on the neighborhood and a supplemental environmental impact statement to reevaluate the traffic impact of several new projects in the area . The letter Encouraged other local home owners and community groups to demand a reduction in development in the area. In June 2009 the City of Yonkers changed the zoning of Warburton Avenue from A - Apartment houses high density to MG Apartment Houses medium density.

Site

Spann House sits on land at the edge of the Old Croton Aqueduct trail that slopes down towards Warburton Avenue and the Hudson River. The site is covered in lush vegetation that includes pine, maple, hosts and fern. Rocks jut out of the earth all over the site. The stone on the site is Yonkers Gneiss, the bedrock material of most of the lower Westchester area. Warburton Avenue where the house is sited, runs parallel to the Hudson River and is relatively level. The flatness is the reason for its development and growth as an important artery for this and its neighboring suburbs. In an age when walking, horse carriages and railways were the primary modes of movement a level terrain was invaluable New York Statesman, The future of Warburton Avenue, 1883.

The house and vegetation are arranged to create composed picturesque views from Warburton Avenue and the Old Croton Aqueduct trail. The house engages the outside with large porch on the parlor level, and large windows from all the rooms looking out on the east side to the aqueduct, on the north and south at the Lawn and hosta gardens respectively.
Approaching from Warburton Avenue, stone steps still take visitors passed a 15 foot deep step in the slope at the front of the site approximately 5 feet above street level. This is the first garden and has always been the most manicured part of the site. Where there were probably local ornamental flowers, Kathryn Spann now has vegetable gardens and ornamental plants. The next level is the house level, the southern portion near the entrance is partially manicured and covered in hostas which thrive in this are, but are particularly attractive to the deer in the region. On the north side there is a large lawn that was and has been used to host garden parties and was probably hedged by rose bushes, as is evident in the remnant bushes that line the area.

A big problem with rejuvenating the garden was the abundance of vines. As a result of years of neglect thick vines had taken over the lawn and manicured gardens, they were notoriously difficult to extract and tricky to eradicate. Truckloads of them had to be removed to return the grounds to their pristine state. Because of its integration into nature Spann House actually embodies the idyllic ideals that its neighbors purport to.

Form and materials

The buildings form is practically an extruded rectangle plan, the only irregularities being the protrusion of bay windows to let in the -now obstructed-views of the Hudson. The roof is a steeply pitched Gable, with Gable dormers on the north and south sides. In plan, Spann house is generally similar to its middle class Victorian counterparts. It has a porch that wraps around the south side to the front, a partially submerged lower level, a raised first level, two floors above that and an attic. The plan was converted first in the 1930s and at least once in the 1980s before its present configuration. What would have been the parlor floor during Spann House's incarnation as a single-family residence now contains a large, one-bedroom apartment, which housed Kathryn Spann during renovation. Another large one-bedroom apartment occupies what would have been the living floor. The floor, where the family bedrooms would have been, was converted to a two-bedroom apartment and where there was a kitchen and servants quarters in the cellar, now there are two studio apartments and a work room. It is connected to the Warburton Avenue on the south west corner by a stone stair, and via a single car garage at the northernmost corner of the site. Kathryn Spann did exhaustive research on the history of the house and found images of it close to when it was built. The color used on the wood trim was an approximation based on the photos she found. She sourced stonemasons with much difficulty to re-point the walls and rebuild the wall and steps leading to the house from Warburton Avenue and up to the aqueduct. To restore the interiors she referenced images from existing great houses in the area of the same period, for most of the work in the house she employed the services of a mixture semi -skilled and skilled students and friends and professionals. The house was essentially gut renovated as the interiors had begun to wear, the last extensive renovation being in the 1970s as can be inferred from the profusion of Formica in the color palettes favored that decade. A new boiler was added, and the electrical system and most fixtures were replaced. The renovation took over 5 years, due in equal parts to the availability of funds and the tedium of sourcing quality vintage or vintage style fixtures along with the complexity of maintaining at least 3 tenants at all times. The following people worked with Kathryn extensively on the renovation and detailing. Cliff Forrest, Grace Lee, Ben Hadley & Kelechi Odu. br />

Significance

"A house is the shape which a man's thoughts take when he imagines how he should like to live. Its interior is the measure of his social and domestic nature; its exterior, of his aesthetic and artistic nature. It interprets in material forms, his ideas of home, of friendship and of comfort" Henry Ward Beacher 1855. By 1897 when Spann House was built the number of artisans doing masonry work in the area had already declined. This was due to the increased mechanization of wood production, the availability and relative inexpensiveness of the material and the resulting demand for houses covered in ornate woodwork. In 1896 there were only 8 companies that worked with stone and marble in the whole of Westchester county. As a result, stone was particularly expensive to build with and was usually reserved for the large stately homes that dotted the edges of the Hudson. While Spann house's stonework can be compared to the Richardsonian Romanesque styles of stately Westchester buildings like Glenview in Yonkers, the lack of working – rustication, squaring or cutting- and the unfussiness of the coursed random rubble masonry relates it more to Westchester's modest though revered 17th and 18th century manors. This suggests an interest in connecting with history and traditional construction methods. A deliberate choice, considering that the idea of the home as an opportunity to showcase ones identity was the general sentiment at the time, as evidenced in the aforementioned quote by Henry Ward Beacher. In his book, Architecture and Suburbia John Archer, suggest that both Assertion of personal Identity and Identification with a group or class contributed to the aesthetics of the suburbs. When Spann house was completed, it contrasted sharply with the then ultra modern turreted and faceted structures being built around it -its design drive apparently leaning more towards personal identification. The contrast is even more jarring when Spann house is considered next to its contemporary counterparts. These buildings, multistory boxes with minimal- almost per functionary embellishments seem to be "machines that make land Pay". The idea of the idyllic has become merely an abstraction. Any relationship to nature is usually in the name of the buildings, such as River hill Tower, Greystone and Riverwatch or limited to the view of the palisades or aqueduct trail from a third story window or sliding door. Spann house is one of the last few stone bearing houses in the area. Its unique construction highlights the desire for conformity that informed the design of its neighbors. In actually embodying the picturesque in its siting, it exposes the power of the bucolic ideal, emphasizing the increasing abstraction of nature that suffices to attract people to the suburb.