Colden Mansion Ruins

The Colden Mansion Ruins are the surviving stone walls and foundations of a 1767 house built by Cadwallader Colden Jr., son of the colonial official Cadwallader Colden, and his wife Elizabeth Ellison, on what was once a 3,000 acre family farm in the Town of Montgomery, New York, along present day NY Route 17K. The Colden family held the property, still known locally as Coldenham and East Coldenham, until the mid nineteenth century, and the house stood until it was abandoned in the 1930s after a probate lawsuit. In 1940 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the house original wooden paneling, now displayed in its Verplanck Room. The ruins were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, and the town later acquired the site through a state transfer connected to Stewart Airport access improvements, with plans to develop it as a park.