The Scarsdale Inquirer – Hometown newspaper of Scarsdale, New York 10583
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The Scarsdale Inquirer is available from our office at
14 Harwood Court in Scarsdale, and at these locations:
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FEBRUARY 17, 2012
Editorial
Eulogy for 2 houses
Preservationists are mourning the probable demise of one of Scarsdale’s historic houses and the certain demise of another.
The Scarsdale Historical Society, once a hotbed of activity, has been a fading presence in the village for several years. First to go were the workshops that taught children old-fashioned domestic skills, like candle making, food drying and bread baking. Then fundraising events — the dinner dance, the country fair, the road race — were discontinued. The exhibits dwindled and eventually ceased. A building lot was sold off. And now the society has come full circle. Thirty–seven years after it was founded to save the Cudner-Hyatt house, the society wants to remove the variance that designated the 18th-century farmhouse a museum and sell it.
While the Cudner-Hyatt house is valued because of its typicality, the Marx estate is valued primarily because of the stature of its owner, Louis Marx, founder of Marx Toys. Not that it wasn’t grand in its day, but the mansion is even more costly to restore than the farmhouse. And no one has come forward to take on either challenge. Following a time-honored strategy, Marx mansion owner Anthony Scarcella has allowed the house to continue to deteriorate beyond the point of no return. So the village was persuaded to set aside its previous rulings barring destruction of the mansion.
The fate of these houses, emblematic of bygone ways of life, illustrates a sad truth — absent a modern use, some old buildings are simply too costly to restore and maintain.
Read more local coverage of your hometown in this week’s issue of The Scarsdale Inquirer. Newsstand copies are available at several locations listed above, or subscribe today for convenient home delivery.
The Scarsdale Inquirer • P.O. Box 418, 14 Harwood Court, Scarsdale, NY 10583 • (914) 725-2500 Fax (914) 725-1552 • www.scarsdalenews.com
©2011 S.I. Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden without the Publisher’s written permission.
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