Real Estate: 420 Grand Street Astor Mansion $499,000

420 Grand Street Newburgh NY

This home is an old house lovers paradise, ripe with original details and history. There are way too many details to condense about this home so here is the real estate listing summary. And yes we love that retro bathroom!

This 8,000 SF landmarked stone mansion with Hudson River views is being offered for the first time in many years. Built for a member of the Astor family in the early 20th century it still has all of the opulent details. Well preserved home resting on a corner lot with stone facade, gables galore,and cedar shake shingles. Enter this grand old lady via the Doric columned porch and be greeted by a fire place of custom made brick. Sunlight filters in through stained glass transom windows. Move toward the great room appreciating the original wood work with coffered ceilings and recessed panel… wainscoting made with quarter sawn oak with original finish. Climb the grand stair case to the bedroom wing and guest quarters. Enter through 5 panel doors with original Yale locks and solid brass hinges. Two pairs of French doors lead to a side garden. The master bath ahead of its time with cobalt blue pedestal sinks, matching accessories including the faucet handles. Potential Galore!

420 Grand Street Newburgh NY [Ryan Degnan, Better H&G]
Asking Price: $499,000
Year Built: 1900 Size: 7,933
Taxes: $14,490
Neighborhood: MGL
Distance to NYC: 57.9 mi, 1 hour 2 mins
Public Transportation: MetroNorth to Beacon, then take ferry, Transit Orange Bus Service
Closest Roadways: 9W, I-87, I-84
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10 Comment

  • This home looks stunning from the photos. Serious credit to the photographer (and architect and craftsmen/women!). Maybe the Newburgh Film Office could contact the owner / future owner about marketing this to location scouts? I get a Royal Tenenbaums vibe. Maybe a period piece, plot line surrounding the Astor family?

    • Quite right Nathan, it has a Wes Anderson look to it. I am hoping it will be featured in another publication. Let’s see…

  • Yea, I’ve always wanted to see the interior of this place! Even though it clearly needs some work, the interior finishes are even more impressive than I’d expected. I hope somebody with money and good taste buys it. Does anyone know who actually built this house? I have a feeling the owner’s name wasn’t Astor, because I think if it were, I would have heard of them being in Newburgh before.

  • I sent a request for info to http://newburghhistoricalsociety.com with a link back to this post.
    Although ‘special’, 420 Grand is relatively modest in comparison to earlier Astor estates. However, as often was the case, many of the heirs were unable to maintain the great wealth associated with their early Industrialist forebearers. So, all things being relative, 420 Grand may have been owned by a disenfranchised Astor constrained to live in squalor ;- )

  • This house was for sale in 2006 and my husband and I took a real estate tour before we ended up buying another house. Nathan is correct in his reference to a possible Wes Anderson set–or given its vast rooms and empty spaces, a horror film. Perhaps the realtor will do some digging and find out who actually built it–and why: the house is so out of proportion to anything else in Newburgh–including the grandest of houses– it would be interesting to know its story.
    The reality in 2006: the property appeared to have been built by someone with either delusions of grandeur or an owner who, given the house’s vast public rooms aspired to be a grand entertainer. The spaces are baronial–not human friendly, really. When we saw it, those spaces were unfurnished and unheated (one can only imagine the heating/maintenance cost of the place) and the young couple who lived there appeared to be camping out in a tiny gerrymade kitchen (probably once a pantry–you can see a photo on the site) and an adjacent room that they used as a bedroom. Both heated by space heaters. There was no furniture in any of the other rooms, including the almost endless series of bedrooms upstairs. The upstairs rooms have suffered severe water damage from a leaking roof–including two rooms with exquisite hand painted wall paper, almost destroyed by water damage.
    The house is at the very end of Grand St., on a corner lot–both inside and out, it is like an island surrounded by three different heavily trafficked streets. There is no yard to speak of and at the back the house, a parking space as I remember, at the bottom of the hill with very steep stone stairs leading to the house itself .
    The virtually no land attached to the house seems quite odd–surely a house of this size would have originally been surrounded by a impressive amount of land.
    Ironically, the house does have one “bargain” aspect: for an almost 8,000 square foot house to have yearly taxes of $14, 490 is a cruel slap in the face to Newburghers who pay approximately the same taxes for a 2,000 square foot or less house in desperate need of renovation.

    • I had looked at it too, in 2005, but settled on a rehab that was less ambitious. I was told that it was a gentlemen’s club…which might explain all the dark wood, and ponderous atmosphere…(and perhaps the small bedrooms upstairs)..Perhaps the agent was speculating…perhaps it was a true representation.

      Unfortunately, judging from the photos, the house has only seen more abuse since 2005.

  • Back in the 1950s and 1960s I always heard this property referred to as the “L B Kidd” house. (L. Beatrice Kidd owned what must have been a very successful women’s apparel shop on Broadway.)

    This neighborhood was for many years the home of Newburgh’s most successful professionals and businessmen (and, in L B Kidd, at least one businesswoman!) Not very likely that any Astors ever lived on Grand Street, however, even relatively poor ones.

    • Yes, L.B.Kidd had a very successful millinery business- she handled high end hats. I bought some of her stuff at an auction- including a business ledger that listed sales- handwritten. There are a few people still milling around who bought hats from her while she was still in business. I’m sure many of her neighbor Mary Stewart’s hats came from L.B.Kidd.

      Several of Newburgh’s mansions have that strange, dark uninviting style of the 1890’s. Some of the woodwork has a greenish tinge to it. Like the Monell Mansion and 1 Grand Ave. It probably showed much better with custom soft furnishings.

      But check out what it sold for the last time it changed hands- and how long ago it was. There’s no excuse that someone would take on a property of that proportion and hold onto it without improving it unless they were speculating. I’ve gotten many a violation for doing the right work- while owners like this- who don’t do anything- are ignored.

  • I can’t comment on the specifics of 420 Grand so I’ll offer an expansive anecdote rather than an “excuse”. The rationale was that deadbeat owners living mortgage free, unfettered by banks or municipalities, would reallocate their “saved” money elsewhere (not “doing the right work”) to the benefit of the broader US economy. It kept ‘the flow” going and kept vacancies down. However, real world economics is catching up and the banks have slowly been working through a backlog of delinquent loans, emptying properties into already depressed areas such as Newburgh. With N.Y. state having the third highest share of residential mortgages delinquent or in foreclosure, that’s a lot of ’emptying’. So who’s going to buy now ? The market is running out of greater fools, smart money, dumb money or otherwise. The remaining few “investors” have already priced themselves out. First-timers ? Good luck with that. All that said, will tptb finally allow a reset of ‘market to reality’, make housing really affordable (no, 3-4% rates with 5% down does not quantify)? The caveat being a short term hit to tax revenues with an anticipation of a future larger sum collected from the aggregate. Of coarse those that are ‘house wealthy’ and leveraged will cry foul. However, the increasingly limited ‘market to fantasy’ is showing to be unsustainable in maintaining a seemingly unlimited expense to revenue ratio in municipal and district coffers.
    Something has to give.

  • This house was built in 1899-1900 by George C. Smith, who purchased 2 vacant lots the year before. Smith was a native of Newburgh, a graduate of Yale and New York Law School, where he was professor and dean for his entire career. He wasn’t related to any Astor.

    George Clark Smith, B.A. 1886 [Yale].
    Born November 21, 1863, in Newburgh, NY
    Died April 29, 1942, in Newburgh, NY
    Father – George Thomas Smith, cashier Central Hudson Steamboat Company, Newburgh. Mother – Augusta (Jordan) Smith, daughter of Stephen Jordan of Bridgeport, Conn.
    Siglar School, Newburgh Dissertation appointment. Junior year, first dispute appointment. Senior year, Class monitor. Freshman year, Class picture committee.
    Instructor in languages and assistant principal Newburgh Free Academy 1886-89, teller Montezuma Valley Bank, Cortez, Colo , 1889-90, attended Columbia University School of Law 1890-91 and New York Law School 1892 (LLB 1892), admitted to the bar 1892, lawyer in Newburgh 1893-94, prize tutor New York Law School 1892-93, instructor in law 1894-1914, assistant professor of criminal law, the law of torts, and the law of wills 1914-17, associate professor 1917-19, professor of law 1919 until retirement 1934; secretary of the School 1894-1933, dean of the faculty 1933-34, and secretary and treasurer board of trustees 1933-34, on Newburgh Board of Education 1897- 1902; member Masonic order and First Baptist Church, Newburgh.
    Married July 12, 1899, in Newburgh, Addie Marie, daughter of Robert and Maria (Chapman) Whitehill. Children – George Clark, Jr , Robert Douglas (died August 24,1905), and Walter Whitehill.
    Death due to injuries received when struck by a freight train. Buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Newburgh. Survived by wife, two sons, and two grandchildren.
    [Yale College obituary]