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Old 03-10-2009, 03:13 PM
 
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A home in either rye or harrison (not sure where)......was built by a wealthy tobacco farm owner......the man built it for his bride...when they came back from honeymoon she fell down stairs and broke her neck?..........anyways it was also at one time a retreat for the sisters of charity........a movie was also made in this mansion "the train" by alfred hitchock.......was in this mansion once as a kid for a family party (my cousin was a caretaker of the place at the time) and had heard as a kid a book was written about it titled the brass nightengale in the ballroom? Help!
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Old 03-10-2009, 10:12 PM
 
Location: Washington, DC & New York
10,915 posts, read 31,243,414 times
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I hope that I can offer a little perspective on what you seem to be describing. I am not sure about the backstory, especially a filming location for "Strangers on a Train," nor the death, but what you're describing is on the border of Harrison and Rye.

It's St. Vincent's Hospital, which is a behavioral health hospital that was started by the Sisters of Charity in the 1890s. They purchased the property, that did have an existing mansion on the site, and started pioneering treatments in mental health. The old mansion was, for a time, used as a summer retreat for resident children of the foundling hospital in New York City.

The old mansion could exist in the grounds today, since there are old houses that dot the property. I have never explored their grounds, but nearby is the Apawamis Club which dates from the 1890s, Westchester Country Club from the early 1900s, and Willow Brook Country Club (which directly borders St. Vincent's), and there are numerous old mansions that dot the roads and lanes of this area of Westchester. It's entirely conceiveable that this is the property which was the one that you're describing, but I am basing this on the location, time period, and the fact that the mansion and about 100 acres were purchased by the Sisters of Charity in the 1870s.

Since it was to be used as a summer home, it is likely isolated from the hospital facility, which could be the case as old properties in Westchester tend to have several entrances/exits in the stone walls when they measure to the size that this parcel did at the time of acquisition. And, some did have numerous residences on-site as well, either for caretakers, farm personnel, or for extended family, and management staffs. It's possible one of these could have been used for the founding of the hospital which today sits close to the North Street border of the property.

If this is the property, the best resource I can think of would be to contact the order through the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, the Bronx, as that's a likely location where they might have an archivist who could fill in the parts of the story that are missing. There might be an order historian who could also offer insight into the house and the potential back story of the tobacco farmer, etc.

Oh, and one more thing, in its previous incarnation St. Vincent's Hospital was known as St. Vincent's Retreat for Mental Diseases.
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