Sunswick

In 1791, Delafield had made a fortune through underwriting marine insurance despite having only arrived in New York some eight years before. He paid his father-in-law $3,300 for the 140-acre Blackwell farm overlooking the East River on which he built his country home, "a bit of Old England in the New World," which he named "Sunswick" after a small river nearby. His brother in London, Joseph, was tasked with buying the furniture and crested silver service that he promptly shipped over to New York. It immediately gained a reputation as one of the best kept estates in New York. In 1805, the mansion was described by its architect and builder, Mr Joseph Newton:

In 1814, John Delafield's fortunes took a turn for the worse after, "the commercial troubles which followed the Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon" which decimated American shipping. After heavily mortgaging Sunswick, he was forced to sell his summer home for $31,500 to the noted mineralogist Colonel George Gibbs (1776-1833). He lived here with his wife, Laura Wolcott, and their family. There were several houses on the estate and in 1825 Gibbs rented one of the farmhouses to his friend, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851); and, Washington Irving's father leased the old Blackwell house for several years.

Colonel Gibbs' "Seat of a Broad and Elegant Hospitality..."

Gibbs was, "a man of singular culture and talent. Brilliant in conversation, polished in manners, and of large and various experience of men and life. Colonel Gibbs was one of the marked men of his day, and his large mansion at Sunswick was the seat of a broad and elegant hospitality rarely to be met with in this country at that time". He was well-known in both Europe and America as the noted mineralogist who gathered the most valuable collection of its kind in this country and which he later sold to Yale University. At Sunswick, Gibbs was able to indulge his passions for science and agriculture and he was, "often occupied with making volcanoes with such materials as he could obtain, and in searching the stone walls... for minerals, and the gardens and fields for flowers". 

Gibbs' son recalled, he had, "about six acres devoted to the cultivation of fruit, vegetables, flowering-plants and shrubs. Having travelled extensively in Europe, he was enabled to import from different parts a great variety of vines, of which among others I remember the Tokay and other Hungarian and Italian grapes; and he was in the habit of sending at the pruning seasons quantities of cuttings to his correspondents in various parts of the United States. Owing to the fertility of the ground and its favorable exposure, most of these throve for some years, but the tenderer sorts were, during the winter, either buried or covered with straw. The European grapes, however, gradually died out or ceased to bear, with some exceptions; but, I have since heard that certain varieties thus introduced have continued to exist, and have become wild in the Southern or Southwestern states."

The hospitality of the Gibbs family was well-known and when a cholera epidemic swept across New York City in the summer of 1832 he put up several families on his estate and in the house itself.

The Village of Ravenswood and Gradual Decline

The year after Gibbs died (1834), the estate was subdivided into lots for suburban development. In 1844, the mansion was acquired by the  Convent of Sacred Heart. However, just three years later the Nuns relocated to the Jacob Lorillard Mansion which is better known today as Manhattanville College. Five years, later (1852), the mansion was home to the Brooks family, but from then its history becomes obscure. It was torn down in the early 1920s. If you know anything of its last years, please leave a comment.