The newly restored Manor House is now open.
The Manor House at Philipsburg
is Presented to the Public in an Entirely New Way
The three-story, whitewashed fieldstone manor house at Philipsburg was built in two stages. First, about 1680, the Philipse family constructed what constitutes the present eastern side of the house (two rooms on each of the upper two floors, plus a kitchen and cellar.) The part of the house constituting the western side was built about 1720; it doubled the size of the house and the number of rooms.
In the centuries after Philipsburg Manor was broken up and sold, successive owners of the manor house frequently modified and expanded it. Beginning in the late 1950s, research identified the original parts of the house, and restoration was complete by late 1960s. The rooms of the house were turned into period settings which suggested that the manor house was a secondary home of the Philipse family. Visitors stood behind ropes while interpreters explained the history of the objects and furnishings and the use of the rooms.
Now, the manor house is no longer portrayed solely as a family residence. Instead it is more accurately interpreted as a vital component of a commercial enterprise that had worldwide connections. Of its ten period rooms, five are refurnished with reproduction objects to facilitate interactive, hands-on learning. That alone differentiates it from most historic house museums in the country.
In the past, the manor house was presented as the primary focus of the Philipsburg Manor tour. Now, the manor house is one of several focal points throughout the site, including the mill, wharf, and farm. The collections in the house have a new significance as they support the telling of the Philipsburg Manor story of commerce, slavery, and cultural pluralism.
The rooms described in the following paragraphs are in order of the standard visit.
Dairy and Lower Kitchen (basement level)
The tour begins in these two connected rooms. Visitors do not enter the house through the "front door" but through the rooms where enslaved Africans worked, cooked, ate, and slept. Unlike most other historic site tours, visitors are encouraged to identify not only with the owners of the house but also with the slaves and tenant farmers whose labor made manor operations possible.
Here interpreters discuss the daily lives of slaves, methods of resistance, the roles of enslaved women, and the provisioning trade. In the Dairy, African women maintained the dairy production, a profitable business for New York landowner/merchants like the Philipses. Butter from New York and the mid-Atlantic was heavily salted and shipped as far away as the West Indies . The Kitchen was both a cooking and living space. Mostly "one-pot" meals for the slaves, based largely around corn meal, were made here on a fire that burned from sunup to sundown.
One reason the Dairy is furnished entirely with reproductions is that the kinds of objects that would have been used here have not survived. They include coopered goods such as churns, keelers (tubs for cooling milk), and firkins (wooden casks for storing and shipping butter.) Ron Raiselis, the cooper at Strawberry Banke museum in Portsmouth , New Hampshire , fabricated these objects for Philipsburg's dairy. Earthenware bowls for washing (reproduction "Buckleyware") and large earthenware pots for storing cream based on archeological and pictorial resources were made by Michelle Erickson of Hampton, Virginia. The very high standards set for the reproduction furnishings have resulted in what HHV curators believe is the most accurate 18th-century dairy installation in the country.
A reproduction 18th-century violin, made to an exacting standard by the Ceske violin makers, is here because so many New Yorkers of African descent, both free and enslaved, played the violin during the colonial period. Many of the newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves mention this skill. (Our documents indicate that Cuffee, a captive of Adolph Philipse, played the fiddle, as did Ishmael, an enslaved man on the neighboring Manor of Van Cortlandt.)
The Upper Kitchen (main floor)
Interpreters discuss the role of slave labor in preparing food and the Philipse family's access to luxury goods and exotic foods through their worldwide trade connections. Luxuries would have included coffee, chocolate, spices, citrus fruits, and sugar, all products of slave-based economies in other parts of the world. The artifacts in this room are part of a fine collection of high-end cooking equipment dating from the 18th century.
Adolph Philipse's Bedchamber (upper floor)
Here the interpreters discuss the multi-faceted Adolph Philipse: Anglo-Dutch merchant, businessman, gentleman, wealthy politician, slave owner and trader. The furnishings are primarily 18th-century period objects, including New England chairs, Chinese porcelain ewer and basin, and books in English and Dutch. The reproduction shackles are clear reminders of the violence that underscored the system of enslavement; manacles were listed in this chamber on a 1750 probate inventory of the property.
Second Bedchamber (upper floor)
Also entirely furnished in 18th -century artifacts, this room interprets the process of making the probate inventory of 1750. The room, in some disarray due to this process and the recent death of property owner Adolph Philipse, is interpreted as a metaphor for the breaking up of the manor, its furnishings, and equipment. More importantly, it is a metaphor for the dissolution of slave families through sale and other means of dispersal, and the insecure position held by the tenant farmers and the white employees of the manor as well at that period.
Warehouse Rooms (upper floor)
Two rooms furnished in reproductions recall that the manor house was essentially a commercial building rather than a home. Interpreters discuss the Philipse family's quest for financial success and material goods, and the cross-cultural contact that took place during the process of business enterprise. The rooms resemble storage rooms rather than rooms for living. Sea chests, reproduced by the Tuckahoe Trading Company of Virginia, are filled with reproduction items of 18th-century trade that visitors may unpack and handle. Interpreters offer a program of informal lessons, which give meaning to the objects.
Office (main floor)
The Office remains furnished in 18th-century objects. Interpreters discuss aspects of the business at Philipsburg Manor and its international connections and bring to life the relationships that existed between the overseers, owners and those enslaved. The 18th-century steel chest, made for the storage of money, and other 18th-century objects help drive the story.
Parlor (main floor)
Interpreters discuss the value of the Parlor in establishing and maintaining business through entertaining. Now as then, relationship building with associates remains a fundamental element of business. This room continues to feature authentic period furnishings. Visitors are asked to imagine discussions relating to the selling of Philipsburg Manor and all its parts, including its chattel, human and otherwise, and what those conversations might have sounded like to the Africans waiting on table.
Foreroom (main level)
The entrance room serves as a hands-on resource center furnished with reproduction objects that are handled and used by visitors. The key feature is the reproduction kas (a type of large storage cabinet) made by Rob Tarule of Essex Junction, Vermont. Visitors open the kas and remove the reproduction documents stored inside. (These include advertisements for runaway slaves, the 1750 inventory of Philipsburg Manor, and other primary sources.) Philipsburg staff explains to visitors how research based on these documents leads to an understanding of the past and encourage visitors to draw their own conclusions from the documents. To examine the documents, visitors sit in the leather-covered chairs at a table, reproduced for Historic Hudson Valley by John Baron of Hebron, Connecticut.
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