Historic Belvidere
Restoration of a Mansion
By Arch
Merrill
Seven years brings many changes.
In the year of 1943 a certain River Rambler
visited a certain historic mansion along the southern Genesee and wrote: “One can hardly see the mansion from the road it sets so far back amid towering trees and dense shrubbery. There
is a stone wall around the ground and a curving driveway that leads through once magnificent lawns and gardens.
“As I ambled up that winding driveway the
elderly caretaker came to meet me. His name is L. A. Van Campen…He had been in charge of the place for 18 years and never have the grounds looked so unkept.”
“I can’t get any help and this is too much
for one man, not so young at that”, he mourned and as we walked through the flower gardens, the spacious lawns and surveyed the stables, I agreed with him. The place still had an air of
splendor.
“The mansion of the Churches still stands
staunchly, its stately South porch with the white pillars looking out on the winding Genesee. Time cannot dim its beauty.”
“I wanted to explore its interiors but Van
Campen said: “Sorry, can’t let anybody in without a note from Mr. Clark (the late S. Hoxey Clark, then owner and then in Miami.)
“So I gave up the idea.”
“But Van Campen told me something of the 26
rooms, the dozen bathrooms, the score of fireplaces, the great chandeliers in the high-ceilinged rooms, most of which are now unused.”
The other afternoon the same River
Rambler, this time accompanied by his better half and not on foot, revisited the historic mansion that Philip church, the pioneer land owner and the father of Allegany County, built in
1810 beside the river, 3 miles north of Belmont on the estate he named Belvidere.
The setting was the same, the towering
trees, the shrubbery, the stone wall and the curving driveway but the phrase “once magnificent lawns anre gardens” does not apply in 1950. Today they are magnificent again.
Belvidere, after years of disuse, has a new
owner. He is Robert B. Bromeley, secretary-treasurer of Bradford Publications, Inc., which operates two newspapers and two radio stations in the Pennsylvania oil city. In his three years
of ownership, he has wrought a marvelous transformation at Belvidere. Gradually he and Mrs. Bromeley are restoring the estate to its old-time dignity.
The lawns and gardens that were “unkept” in
1943 are trim and luxuriant now. Bromeley has restored the large formal gardens as they we in the time of the Churches, following meticulously a map he found in the residence. L. A. Van
Campen is still an employee but he has plenty of help now.
The stately exterior of the 140 year old
mansion was just as I remembered it. Indeed, time cannot dim its beauty. The hospitable Bromeleys required no card to show us the interior. No room is unused now. Mrs. Bromeley is
diligently collecting period furnishings in keeping with the age and dignity of the house.
No longer does a somber silence hang over
Belvidere. The happy cries of children ring out as they splash in the new swimming pool on the south lawn, the one touch of modernity on the place. Thoroughbred horses, some of them
descendants of the mighty Man of War, crop the pasture grass. An old and gracious way of life has been restored to Belvidere.
A picturesque old tea house has been
restored and moved to the river bank. And for the first time I saw the curious nine-sided brick coach house that is as old as the mansion itself.
To me a high-spot of the visit was meeting
Charles E. Whitcomb again. At 87, he is as spry and alert as he was seven years ago when I visited him in his house of many clocks, guns and violins on the main river road near what is
left of the village called Belvidere, a mile from the mansion.
He is an authority on local history and
particularly on the lore of the mansion. In his youth he worked for Richard Church, last of the line to live in the manor house. He knows every inch of the house and of the estate. His
memory is phenomenal. He pointed out an iron boot scraper that has stood at the north portico for decades.
No house in the Genesee Country is more
fraught with history. The first Church in America was John Barker Church, a well born Englishman who fled to these shores under the name of “John Carter,” to espouse the cause of
colonial independence. During the Revolution he was a commissary general of the French army. He married one of the belles of the land, Angelica, the daughter of Gen. Phillip Schuyler,
and a sister of the wife of Alexander Hamilton.
To John and Angelica Church a son was born
in 1778 and he was named Philip after his grandfather. Philip Church was reared in aristocratic surroundings here and abroad.
Yet he came to live in the backwoods and to
become the first citizen of a new county. This is how it came about: John B. Church had loaned Robert Morris, financier of the Revolution, a large sum, taking as security 100,000 acres
of land in Western New York. Morris was unable to meet his obligations and in 1799 young Philip Church journeyed to Canandaigua, capital of the frontier, to bid in at foreclosure sale
what is now the central part of Allegany County.
He selected a site near its center as the
principal town, which he name Angelica after his mother. He reserved 2,000 acres as his personal estate, which he called Belvidere. There in 1804 arose the “White House,” the first
painted building in the region, and to that house in 1805 Philip church brought his patrician Philadelphia bride, Anne Matilda Stewart, after an arduous journey through the wilds in wagon
and on horseback.
John B. Church is said to have planned the
mansion, which still stands after 140 years although he never lived there. Its architect was the eminent Benjamin Latrobe of Philadelphia and no expense was spared in its building. The
brick and stone and hard hewn timbers that went into it came from the Church lands but most of the artisans were imported.
Philip Church lived in the mansion until
his death in 1861. He became the head man of the new county of Allegany of which he made Angelica the county seat although he had to annex three Steuben County townships to do it. He was
influential in bringing the Genesee Valley Canal and the Erie Railroad to the region and was an early judge of the county.
After his death his son, Richard, lived in
the mansion and carried on its tradition of lavish hospitality. In the late 1890’s financial reverses caused him to sell the estate and since then, it has had various owners, among them
Fred B. Keeney of Warsaw, who operated a large stock farm, and Louise Squires Clark, who predeceased her husband, Hoxie Clark. Before the Bromeleys acquired Belvidere, no one but the
caretakers had lived in it for a decade.
Ghosts haunt the mansion – shades of
the famous guests who were entertained there, the Schuylers and other kinfolk of the Churches; Horatio Seymour, once governor of New York and a candidate for the Presidency; the Wadsworths
from their neighboring estates in the Middle Valley; Thomas Morris, the son of Robert; Robert Troup, the land agent.
Belvidere once housed some of the private
papers of Alexander Hamilton, whose private secretary Philip Church had been, and also the pistols which Hamilton carried to his death in his duel with Aaron Burr. According to tradition,
they had belonged to John B. Church, who used them in a bloodless duel with Burr and later Philip Church loaned them to Hamilton’s son, also killed in a duel. Long in the possession of
the Church family, they now are in the Bank of Manhattan in New York City.
Bromeley contributed a new bit of lore
connected with the house. It was there that the first baggage check was perfected. In the early 1840’s, William Morris, a descendant of Robert, and an official of the Erie Railroad,
while visiting Richard Church, hit upon the idea of numbered pieces of pastecard to stop the loss of baggage on the railroad. Church suggested the brass and leather straps to tie the
pieces together.
The new owners have a deep feeling for
their stately residence and its history and traditions. It was heart warming to see that Belvidere, one of the showplaces of the Genesee Country, had come to life again.
Charley Whitcomb, who is a wizard at making
clocks and madding them run, suggested we stop and see the collection of timepieces of his neighbor, the Rev. Jerome Kates, long time rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Rochester
and recently retired, who lives on the farm near Belmont that has been his summer home for years.
Retirement to this vigorous and genial
clergyman does not mean sitting in the sun. He keeps might busy. Currently he is filling the pulpit of the Episcopal Church in Belmont that was his first charge.
And then there is his hobby, the clocks,
all 75 of them. To one who knows nothing about clocks, his running discourses on the maker and the merits of each one is a bit bewildering. Proudly he tells where he picked each one up,
the grandfather clocks, the tower clocks, the steeple clocks and all the rest of the array.
When we were down in Allegany County, the
Rev. Mr. Kates and Charley Whitcomb were planning a considerable project, the installation of a large clock above the door of the Kates barn.