“Like a Great Dane or a terrace garden, a ghost is hard to maintain in New York.” (Well, according to the New York Times) as one reporter so eloquently put it when discussing the long-rumored possibility that the Morris-Jumel Mansion is haunted.
Manhattan’s oldest house, the mansion was commissioned in 1765 by Col. Roger Morris + his wife, Mary Philipse. “Mount Morris” as it was dubbed, sat atop Manhattan’s highest point. The couple’s sprawling, 130-acre estate stretched from river to river affording clear views from Harlem to Hudson as well New York Harbor, New Jersey + Connecticut. New York had not yet become the city we know + love. Most of its land remained undeveloped at this time.
This fantastic vantage point made the site ideal for George Washington + his men when he made the place his headquarters for five weeks in the fall of 1776. Morris + Philipse promptly vacated the house at the start of the revolution. (Their loyalty to the crown simply would not do at all in those days.) As the war went on, Washington was run out of town for a spell + the mansion became home to Hessians. (You know, the stuff that headless horsemen are made of—German mercenary soldiers + allies to the British.)
Enter Stephen Jumel, a French sugar plantation owner fleeing unrest in Haiti who purchased the house in 1810. He married Eliza Bowen, a member of the 18th-Century political inner-circle + an eccentric, unusual woman of her time.
Stephen Jumel died in 1832 following a carriage accident. In 1833, Eliza married… yep, you guessed it, AARON BURR. They separated only four months later, after Eliza realized Burr was bleeding her dry with some unwise financial decisions. Eliza lived out her days in the house. She died in 1865.
The Morris-Jumel Mansion was purchased by the City of New York + preserved as a museum in 1904. Today, “Morris Hill” has become “Sugar Hill.” From its perch, the house bore witness to the great Harlem renaissance of the 1920’s. Many well-known African American artists, thinkers + athletes including Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson + Duke Ellington called the neighborhood home. The Jumel Terrace Historic District encompassing 160th Street remains a treasure trove of 19th Century architecture.
And now, ghosts. Though the Mansion’s staff deny outright that there are any spirits in the house, there are two separate stories that have been widely reported. In the 1960’s a group of school children with their teacher reported a woman in period dress shushing them from a second floor balcony saying, “My husband is very ill, you have to keep quiet.” Thinking the woman an employee playing a part, the children moved to another part of the house. Only realizing they may have seen a ghost after passing a mannequin dressed as Eliza Jumel. Upon seeing it, the children, all at once, exclaimed, “That’s her! That’s her!” Staff also report that groups of very young children often refuse to enter a certain part of the house, saying “bad things” are there. Ghosts are not a modern phenomenon for the house. In 1810, several people claimed they had seen the spirit of a Hessian soldier in a window, + Mary Bowen, Eliza Jumel’s step daughter refused to stay in the house alone. Eliza Jumel herself reportedly negotiated a discount in the Mansion’s purchase price due to rumors that it was haunted. In 2015, the mansion celebrates its 250th year.
Way Up in the Attic 