The Carrie Chapman Catt House, also known as Juniper Ledge, is located on Ryder Road in the town of New Castle,[note 1] New York, United States.

[3] While it is a fine example of its school of architecture, the house's primary historical value is that it was the home of suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt and her partner Mary Hay from 1919 to 1928.

She found the house an ideal place to rest her "tired nerves" since the land was too steep to farm productively.

However, later on she did start limited farming, including raising cattle and chickens, on the land, and made some significant modifications to the property.

She also claimed to a group of guests during the early years of Prohibition that she had bought the land to prevent anyone from using its juniper berries to make gin.

There is a garage to the east of the house and an in-ground swimming pool in the rear yard to its north; both date to after Catt's residence and are not considered contributing resources to the property's historic character.

A two-story service wing is on the west end and a one-story enclosed porch on the south overlooks the pool.

Above it is an offset round-arched nine-over-nine double-hung wooden sash window with a brick surround recessed into a segmental arch in the stone.

[2] The porch on the south facade is supported by large stone piers and enclosed with aluminum window panels.

Neoclassicism is the predominant decorative mode—the stairway's newel post is Doric, and the dining room has a pilastered mantelpiece.

[5] Eventually she became involved with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the leading group campaigning for it, and succeeded Susan B. Anthony as its president in 1900.

Left financially secure by his will, she moved to a more luxurious apartment on Central Park West and became active in NAWSA again.

It still needed to be ratified by three-quarters of the states, and accordingly she traveled the country making speeches and appearing at rallies to that end.

They improved the driveway and stream, graded the ledge-tops, planted gardens and began raising some chickens and cows.

"Turning through a stone gateway and climbing through a steep grade to the house," she wrote of a visit that summer, "one beheld wide lawn, flower borders, terraced hillside, great outcropping rocks, spire-like junipers, forest trees, old apple trees, and at the end of the climb one looked out over a long and misty valley spread out below, and became aware of the murmur of water as it fell from ledge to ledge down the hill.

In June 1921, The New York Times covered a picnic held by a hundred LWV members from New York City to welcome her back from a trip to the West, where she had accepted honorary law degrees from Iowa State, her alma mater, and the University of Wyoming, which had been the first to grant women the vote.

She and the guests visited 14 trees on the property to which Catt had affixed bronze plaques in memory or honor of key suffragists like Esther Hobart Morris and LWV president Maud Wood Park.

Since the berries of the juniper trees were the main ingredient in gin, she told her guests, she had bought the property to make sure they would never be used for that purpose.

A 1923 article in Today's Housewife takes note of her memorial grove and describes her "every summer wearing for the most part of the day a wide brimmed hat and summer dress, out among her flowers and vegetables, happy to be back upon the land and to take an interest in crops and stock.

In 1926 she was among 600 people invited to a meeting at the White House which helped resolve a dispute with Mexico and averted war.

Since her partner had never warmed to country life the way she had, Catt agreed after 1927 that they would sell the house and move somewhere more to their mutual liking.

At first they considered moving to Arizona or California, and looked at houses there, but after realizing that they wanted to be close to New York City decided instead to stay in Westchester, buying a cottage near Long Island Sound in New Rochelle.

Land values in areas near parkway exits, like Juniper Ledge, went up as more people sought to live as Catt had.

Among them were Nora and Peter Roots, who lived there in the early 1950s with their children, Stephanie, Judith and David; and Walter and May Large, who became known locally for their involvement in town activities and generosity, particularly to residents of the nearby hamlet of Millwood.

Carmino Ravosa, a composer best known for his work on the children's television shows Captain Kangaroo and Shining Time Station, was researching a musical about Briarcliff Manor when he learned of Catt's residence in the area.