Estherwood (Dobbs Ferry, New York)

Estherwood is a late 19th-century mansion located on the campus of The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, United States.

It was the home of industrial tycoon James Jennings McComb, who supported Masters financially in its early years when his daughters attended.

It had been attached to McComb's previous home, but he had felt it deserved a house more in keeping with its style and so had architect Albert Buchman design Estherwood built around it.

As the only significant châteauesque building in Westchester County,[1] it was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1979 as Estherwood and Carriage House.

The dining room has dark oak walls with carved Northern European motifs such as boars' and rams' heads, broken by copper and bronze medieval sconces.

Adamesque swags and garlands, also highlighted in gold, are carved into the wall and ceiling along with musical motifs such as lyres, horns and Pan flutes.

The south wall is of mahogany with brass trim; it features the Music Room's fireplace, flanked by carved Corinthian pilasters.

The drawing room at the house's northwest corner features scrolled brackets and marble Composite columns on high plinths.

[1] Upstairs, the house has been remodeled somewhat by the school, but the bird's-eye maple and golden oak woodwork have been retained, as well as the frosted glass closet-door panels and sliding doors off the gallery.

[1] Ohio native James Jennings McComb's wealth came from his invention of the ties that secured cotton as it emerged from balers.

[3] Estherwood is a rare residential commission for Albert Buchman, better known for commercial and institutional structures such as the New York World Tower and the Student Building at Barnard College.

In its lavish use of materials and elements that would be characterized as conspicuous consumption, Estherwood has been compared to Richard Morris Hunt's The Breakers – the Vanderbilt family summer home in Newport, Rhode Island – that had been completed only three years before, attracting much notice as the most expensive house ever built at that time.