Biography of composer william boyce thompson mansion yonkers ny

The W. In , it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

William Boyce ( - ) Composer of the melody to The Liberty Song, Boyce is best known as one of England's greatest dramatic composers.

It was built by William Boyce Thompson , a mining tycoon and financier, as his weekend home. At the turn of the century, large riverside estates characterized much of Yonkers; today the Thompson Mansion is one of the few to have survived the city's 20th-century urbanization. After ten years as a high school, it was upgraded to a junior college.

A few years after merging with Iona College , the campus was closed. While the other buildings on the property were repurposed , the mansion fell into neglect and was looted until Tara Circle, an Irish American cultural organization, bought it from the city. To raise money for its restoration , Tara Circle holds occasional events there and rents it out for weddings and filming for movies such as Mona Lisa Smile [ 3 ] and A Beautiful Mind.

The mansion is located in the northwestern corner of Yonkers, on bluffs feet 91 m above the Hudson River a thousand feet m to the west. John's Riverside Hospital is on the south. The trailway along the Old Croton Aqueduct , a National Historic Landmark , passes through the woods next to the preserve on the steep slopes leading westward down to the river.

At the river itself are some modern high-rise apartment buildings around the Greystone station on Metro-North Railroad 's Hudson Line. Around the house is extensive landscaping. There are terraces and sculpture gardens to the south. It is complemented on the north by a walled classically inspired garden with many authentic Roman artifacts.

At its west end is a replica of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. Its main block is topped by a tiled hipped roof pierced by chimneys and alternating hipped and gabled dormer windows set with one-over-one double-hung sash.