Delavan Terrace Historic District

The district is essentially rectangular in shape, covering both sides of Delavan Terrace and the lots at the corners on Palisade and Park Avenues. An extension at the southwest includes the now-vacant lot where the Smith–Collins House stood on the west side of Palisade. The total area is . On the east and south are large modern apartment complexes. To the southwest is a sharp drop down into a parking lot for a Ukrainian American cultural center. Northwest of the district is another apartment complex. On the northeast and east are other houses, generally more modern than those in the district. The neighborhood in general is residential, with downtown Yonkers a mile (1.6 km) to the south-southwest. ==Buildings==

All ten buildings in the district are houses. There are no non-contributing properties. • 147 Park Avenue. The only property in the district not known by the name of an owner, this five-bay, two-and-a-half-story Mission Revival stucco-faced house dates to 1908. Its entrance porch has a hipped roof supported by stucco piers; the main entrance has a denticulated paneled surround with one-over-one double-hung sash window sidelights. Most of the sash windows elsewhere on the house are set in molded architraves. At the northeast corner is a six-sided pavilion. The main house's hipped pantile roof is pierced by dormer windows with six-over-six three-part windows. A hipped-roof, below-grade garage is on the east. • Reuben Borland House, 10 Delavan Terrace. This is a timber frame two-bay, two-and-a-half-story house faced in stone at ground level and shingles on the upper stories topped by a cross-gabled gambrel roof. Built in 1904, it is a late application of the Queen Anne style. Its distinctive features include a recessed porch around the entrance and its architrave flanked by Ionic pilasters, as well as a variety of fenestration typical of the style, including bay windows, oriel windows and oval windows. Upstairs is a recessed attic porch with curved shingled cheek walls and semi-elliptical balcony supported by brackets. The roofline has flaring eaves and denticulated raking boards. Dormers have been added and a side balcony removed. The garage has a hipped roof and half-timbering. • Alexander Denniston House, 6 Delavan Terrace. This three-bay, two-and-a-half-story cross-gabled Tudor Revival house dates to 1911. It, too, has a recessed pent-roofed entrance porch with four-pointed arch on the architrave, flanked by sidelights. Above it is a projecting gabled pavilion supported by consoles with pendants and diamond-paned casement windows. Elsewhere on the facades are bay windows and half-timbering in the gable ends, per the style. The side porch is supported by Tuscan columns; the rear porch has an open deck. • A. Doty House, 4 Delavan Terrace. Built in 1926, this is the newest house in the district. It is a two-and-a-half-story, five-bay brick neo-Colonial building topped by a slate-shingled hipped roof with a balustrade at its apex. At the center of the ground floor on the north is a fluted, paneled main entrance surround with sidelights and an elliptical fanlight. The two six-over-six sash windows on either side have paneled lintels. At the roofline is a denticualted cornice. Segmental-arched dormers and end chimneys pierce the roof. On the east side a three-bay breezeway leads to the garage. • William Howard House, 9 Delavan Terrace. Another two-and-a-half-story cross-gambreled frame Queen Anne, this was built in 1904. It features a front porch with wrought iron work and Ionic columns running the full three bays, topped by an open deck. Ionic pilasters also frame the double doors at the main entrance. Dormers pierce the roof; the original shingle siding has been covered over by vinyl. • Griffith John House, 23 Delavan Terrace. This two-and-a-half-story, three-bay 1906 Queen Anne combines stone facing on the ground level with vinyl upstairs. The continuous porch has a bracketed cornice and is upheld by stone piers. A bay window projects at the southwest corner. The hipped roof is pierced by large projecting gabled dormers and a stone chimney. • E.D. Knap House, 14 Delavan Terrace. This 1907 house is the only one in the district in the Western Stick style, demonstrating its evolution into the Bungalow style. Its shingled two and a half stories are four bays wide, with that facade looking east. It has a glazed entrance porch, oriel window on carved brackets, mix of casement and sash windows and a recessed first-story porch supported by wooden piers. The hipped roof has hipped dormers and exposed rafters at the roofline. • Law–Baldwin House, 354 Palisade Avenue. With a construction date of 1886, this three-bay, three-and-a-half-story Shingle-style house is now the oldest property in the district. A one-story south wing was added in 1894. It features a continuous balustraded porch with Ionic columns and an open deck on top. In the gable ends of its intersecting gambrel roofs is a recessed window with curving cheeks. The roofline features denticulated raking boards. • Littel House, 149 Park Avenue. This is a Tudor Revival–style house that has the stucco facing but not the half-timbering, built in 1915. Five bays in width and two and a half stories tall, its cross-gabled roof is complemented by a pent roof on the first-story entrance porch, supported by Tuscan columns with intervening trellis work. Wood string courses set off the stories. Oriels with diamond-paned casement windows are complemented by sash in various sizes on the main facades. • Charles E. Otis House, 5 Delavan Terrace. This two-and-a-half-story, three-bay Tudor Revival house was built in 1904. It features a recessed four-centered pointed-arch balustraded entrance porch. Applied pilasters and sidelights frame the main entrance, and a projecting gabled entrance pavilion with half-timbering and wooden consoles. On the stucco and half-timbered facade themselves are a mixture of sash windows, diamond-paned casement and bracketed oriel windows. The hipped roof has a centrally placed gabled dormer; the garage is below grade. Smith–Collins House The Smith–Collins House was located at 323 Palisade Avenue. Built in 1854, it was the oldest building in the district at the time it was listed. It was a two-and-a-half-story High Victorian Gothic house with many bays, sided at first in clapboard and later stucco. Its most-striking feature was a three-story crenelated entrance tower on the northeast corner with a round-arched entrance and windows. It was complemented by bay windows elsewhere on the facade; the sash windows had wooden architraves and shutters. On the rear was a two-story glazed veranda with four center-arched windows and a balustraded terrace. The many gables on the roof were themselves pierced by gabled dormers with vergeboards. In the rear was a carriage house, the only one in the district. It had its original clapboard siding and a hipped roof with a cupola. The main house's interior had Eastlake-style wooden paneling, molding and mantels. It was one of the few intact examples of that kind of interior in the city. In 1875, it was renovated substantially. The clapboard was refaced with stucco. The porte-cochère, tower belvedere, gable trim and most of the front porch were removed. In 2007, it and the carriage house were demolished. Only the front wall and gate remain. ==History==

Due to being part of large landholdings, Delavan Terrace, and the land that eventually became it, was developed later than some other comparable areas of the city. When it was, however, that development occurred in bursts which caught it up with them. She reportedly liked the neighborhood, and the Borland House in particular, because it reminded her of the cottage in the London neighborhood of St John's Wood where she had lived while growing up. "She seems ... to have warmed to its very ordinariness," observed one biographer. A reporter who visited the house to interview her described it as "a homey one and a half story red granite and wood structure built upon a still green terrace ... About it hangs an air of quaintness and quiet." She preferred simple interior decoration, eschewing pictures of herself in favor of modest furniture, paintings and Native American handicraft. was moved to offer legislation that would make any demolition of a building over 75 years old subject to the city's landmark review process. ==See also==