Briarcliff Farms
One of several enterprises established by Law at the turn of the 20th century, the farm was known for its milk, butter, and cream and also produced other dairy products, American Beauty roses, bottled water, and print media.
[2]: 21, 31 [3] In 1887 Stillman had a display at the Great Dairy and Cattle Show in New York City's Madison Square Garden, where he demonstrated setting milk, churning cream and making butter.
[2]: 35 He rapidly added to his holdings, buying about forty parcels in less than ten years; by 1900, Law owned more than 5,000 acres (8 sq mi) of Westchester County[9][10] and was its largest individual landholder.
[11] Some previous owners became tenant farmers; Law received half of the hay and straw from a 160-acre (60 ha) farm formerly owned by Jesse Bishop, and one-third of everything else.
[2]: 35 Law and Briarcliff Farms initially deepened the Pocantico River for 2 miles (3 km), taking out rifts so the stream would flow and adjacent swamps would drain.
Law hired Leonard Pearson (a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania)[12][13] to check each cow every six months for tuberculosis[14]: 102 and other diseases, exceeding New York City Board of Health standards.
[17] Photographs by the US government of Briarcliff Farms' barns, farmland, Law's mottoes and employees were displayed[22] in the exposition's Palace of Social Economy and Congress.
Law quickly arranged for a temporary dairy in a room of the electric plant which had a boiler for sterilization; by the afternoon, milk was processed as usual.
[2]: 43 [25] That year Law's son, Walter Jr., joined his father and brother Henry in managing the farm and realty company; he was the second village president,[26] in office from 1905 to 1918.
Law's general manager, George W. Tuttle (who had worked at Briarcliff Farms since 1901),[28] arranged the Pine Plains purchases and the construction of new barns, a creamery, a power station and other buildings.
The rest of the cattle were transferred a day later, to the farm's main station (between Pine Plains and Attlebury on the Central New England Railway)[31] at Barn A.
[33] On October 9, 1918,[28][34] New York banker Oakleigh Thorne[35] and several partners purchased the 4,200-acre (7 sq mi) Briarcliff Farms property, cattle and dairy buildings[1]: 37 for $500,000 ($10.1 million in 2023[6]).
[2]: 35 The farm had a large supply store, with feed and other items, southeast of the service station at North State and Pleasantville Roads.
[48]: 336 [49]: 307 Walter Law encouraged his Briarcliff Farms employees to move into the village, selling 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) or 11,250-square-foot (1,045 m2) plots of land to workers for a nominal price.
Law frequently joined the men at meals,[13] lecturers visited the boarding house[49]: 313 and the farm workers had a performing orchestra, brass band and glee club.
[16] The pigs (which included Chester Whites and Berkshires) lived outdoors, because the farm superintendent believed they should be penned only for breeding; in summer, they were allowed to run in the orchards or the woods.
[13][48]: 336 The farm gardens grew a variety of crops, adapting to the market;[65] in 1900 this included oats, rye, corn, wheat, buckwheat, carrots, mangolds, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, sugar beets, potatoes, apples, cabbages, rye, oat, and wheat straw, hay, corn stalks and silage.
The Briarcliff Table Water Company sold its products in New York City, Lakewood, New Jersey and the Westchester municipalities of Yonkers, Tarrytown, White Plains, and Ossining.
[1]: 36 Milk was sent to the Hotel Lorraine, the St. Regis, the Waldorf Astoria, Mendel's Lunch Room at Grand Central Station and Milhau's Drug Store on Broadway, and kumyss was sent to seventeen New York City drugstores.
In 1906, Andrew Carnegie wrote about Briarcliff Farms: "Every known appliance or mode of treatment is at hand, and the herd is pronounced free from all and every ailment.
The farm's large, light barns had concrete floors, which were cleaned daily,[63] and up-to-date appliances for separating, churning, handling and packing its products.
[5] Law made annual five-dollar cash awards ($183 in 2023[6]) to workers in September (giving them out at Dalmeny on December 24),[12] which included "most gentle with cows", "most careful teamster in feeding his horses and keeping his stables clean", "cleanest delivery wagon", "neatest house yard", "best garden truck" and "best-kept room in Dalmeny";[13] the farm emphasized the commercial value of such virtues.
On Christmas Eve, after the Briarcliff Orchestra played George Frideric Handel's "Largo", Law spoke about the farm's improvements that year and awarded the prizes.
The application of this rule to cows ought to create a moral evolution in the stablemen, so that by and by it could be applied to human folk as well, and thoroughly believed in as a workable law of life.
The other group, the Pierson commercial greenhouses, grew the American Beauty rose and rare carnations; it produced 22 varieties and about 2,500 blooms a day.
[9] The Briarcliff Lodge sponsored an annual American Beauty carnival with a golf tournament, water sports, moonlight bathing and night diving, a dinner dance, a cinema program and a concert.
[5] The committee, chaired by Hewitt, included Cutting, Jacob H. Schiff, John G. Carlisle, Mrs. Seth Low, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Walter Law and William E. Dodge.
[82] Its goal was "to open an independent means of livelihood for young men and women, especially of our cities; to demonstrate that higher values may be obtained from land under intelligent management, and to develop a taste for rural life.
[2]: 71, 73 Most of the Pine Plains farmland is occupied by Berkshire Stud, a Thoroughbred breeding farm which purchased 550 acres (220 ha) beginning in 1983,[89] and the Mashomack Polo Club (which owns the farmhouse on Halcyon Lake).
[28][90] The farm's creamery[28] and several barns (some built during the 19th century) still stand at the polo club, and have been used since the 1980s for stables, farm-equipment storage and the raising of sporting birds.
