J.J.'s sister Alice and father John helped document their family's English and Welsh pedigree, colonial ancestors, war-time service, and Fire Lands migration.
[1] After successfully completing his college course, J.J. initially married Mary Clark Mattocks on 12 July 1887 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, at the bride's childhood home.
[2] Before settling into their described "Bonnie Brae" on the Hudson River at Spuyten Duyvil, J.J. and Mary visited her mother in Los Angeles, California to consolidate contiguous land for the completion of their estate on Palisade Avenue, New York City.
[2] Primarily J.J. lived and practiced law in New York City; though, he occasionally traveled for business or an excursion to Oberlin, Bermuda, or to Ricker's Hill-Top in Poland Spring, Maine.
[2] Oberlin's writing guild and its oratory society, wherein he excelled,[7] helped prepare him for ten hour days of studying law,[8] moot court, and the Socratic Method at Harvard, where he began during the autumn of 1884.
[20] John J. held his last partnership with McKelvey & Kennedy from 1926 to 1930 before finishing his solo law career,[5] with an office at 36th West 44th Street[21] and pleadings before the New York Supreme Court on behalf of his affluent clients.
Holding a dozen or so board memberships and principalship positions, John counseled officers of varied business entities, involving insurance underwriting, lumber, finance, politics, preservation, railroad, and voluminous realty issues.
[25] John's advocacy and appearance work augmented his travel and influence from Canada to California to the Roosevelt White House, 1904[26] and kept his name in wide-ranging newspapers and respected industry periodicals, as an authority, appearing alongside the names of entities such as these: Through the Park District Protective League, attorney McKelvey represented the realty rights and interests of wealthy landowners who lived along the Hudson River at Spuyten Duyvil.
[29] McKelvey primarily pushed his lasting strategy through the below five named collectives: The landscape continued to change for the park residence district with the onslaught of WWI through the Great Depression, which amplified the pressure from urban developers, commissioners, and unabated assessors.
Metaphorically, McKelvey described the law school review as a pebble innocently tossed upon immeasurable water, with an effect beyond the initial pulsating ripple, unclear.
[32] As early as 1901, concerned citizens began complaining about intruding patients from a nearby infirmary, meandering through their quaint neighborhoods, onto their verandas and lawns, loitering, and spitting phlegm.
For decades the Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Kingsbridge, and Hudson Park communities symbolized tranquil, picturesque manors, isolated for the influential, the industrialist, the informed who resented gestures of urban encroachment toward their enclaves of estate living.
[39] On April 8, 2022, the street co-naming will be unveiled in a public ceremony, (hosted by Council Member Eric Dinowitz) successfully ending a three year effort by community activist Stephanie Coggins for the historic acknowledgment of the contributions of John J. McKelvey Sr. to Spuyten Duyvil and for preservation of the legacy of architectural gemstone Villa Rosa Bonheur, after its untimely and controversial demolition by a developer to build an apartment building.
[40] Mr. McKelvey practiced community building, finding clients, membership, and participation in numerous organizations, including those listed below: Academia Arts Church Civic Legal Library Social In print and in person McKelvey may have been described as an independent Democrat[22] and Protestant[5] who in theory politically backed free silver opponents but walked in practice with the capitalists and industrialists of his day, such as the Hearsts and Rockefellers.