These three houses stand in the village where I live. They all have and interesting history.

Above: Ramorney. This large and beautiful home on Pleasantville Road was built around 1895. It was probably designed as a “show house” to entice prospective home buyers. However, we know it was the home to Eugene T. Booth, an American nuclear physicist who was a member of the historic Columbia University team, which worked on the Manhattan Project, and Andrew J. Vosler, a prominent local citizen and member of the Board of Education.

Spruce Knolls. Built in 1911. This imposing, little-changed house was the home of William Woodward Baldwin, Esq., one of he attorneys used by Walter W. Law, the founder of Briarcliff Manor. Baldwin lawyered the benighted “Plasmon Company of America” deal with Law, Mark Twain and other investors. Plasmon’s factory was located on Woodside Avenue in a stone building currently used by Briarcliff Classic and Imported Car Services. Plasmon, the company claimed, was a skim milk casein, or protein that possessed “all sorts of marvelous qualities.” Twain, who was acting president of the company, which eventually went bankrupt, had written in a testimonial to the effect that if you ingested Plasmon and “trusted in God, you were all right.” When the casein hit the fan and the company faltered. Twain would only admit to being its nominal vice president. An April 19, 2016 article, entitled “The 19th-Century Start-Ups That Cost Mark Twain His Fortune” includes the following:

Twain, being Twain, though, couldn’t resist investing again, once his bank account was restored. He poured thousands of dollars into backing a protein powder called Plasmon, which he claimed delivered 16 times the nutritional value of steak at a cost of a penny a day; it could “end the famine in India.”

The author lost his stake in the U.S. launch and Plasmon was the subject of a fraud trial in 1907, in which Twain tried to recoup his $30,000 investment (about $750,000 today). At the trial, Twain said that company president Henry A. Butters should have been paid “$3 a century” and was a “stallion in intention, a eunuch in action.” Twain was asked if this was the first time that he had been swindled. “No, I have been swindled out of more money than there is on the planet,” he told the judge.

Then, the author paused. “I oughtn’t to say I was swindled out of all the money,” he said. “Most of it was lost through bad business. I was always bad in business.”

Baldwin, meanwhile, lived well in Briarcliff Manor for 27 years, served on the local Board of Education, and was a congregant of the Briarcliff Congregational Church.

The Dysart House. This beautiful house-on-the-hill sports a fieldstone foundation, an upper story of half-timber and stucco and pointed wooden finials. Built by Walter Law to be a large guest house across from the railroad station (before the Briarcliff Lodge was finished). It was probably named after Dysart House in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. When the Lodge was completed and guests could be accommodated there, the house became a school for boys and girls run by the Misses Tewksbury between 1902 and 1913. There are still school bells in the house.

Taken with a Nikon D800 and Nikon AF Nikkor70-300mm f4-5.6G