2023 Ended on a High Note!

December was a busy month, packed with accomplishments and awards for the Friends of Odell House Rochambeau Headquarters (OHRH).

It began on December 2 when our President, Susan Seal, was awarded the Bronze Medal for Good Citizenship by the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). Ken Stevens, the President of the Westchester Putnam Chapter of the SAR, and longtime supporter of the Friends, noted in his speech that the SAR was pleased to see OHRH moving swiftly towards completion. He praised the Friends’ efforts to make Odell House an important site to learn about the history of the Revolutionary War and the crucial alliance with France.

Following that event, we learned that OHRH will receive funding for museum design planning from the Westchester County Board of Legislators and the Scarsdale Historical Society (SHS). A big thank you to David Imamura, County Legislator, and the Board of SHS!
 
Immediately after that announcement we signed a contract with Amaze Design of Boston, Massachusetts, for the first phase of the planning project. Amaze designed the permanent interpretive exhibits for the wonderful new Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site in Yonkers. We are thrilled to have them as part of our team and look forward to sharing their designs with you later this year.
 
The Friends are honored to have four prominent scholars join our newly-created Academic Advisory Committee in December.

• Travis Bowman, the head of museum collections for the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites, where he coordinates the Curatorial, Conservation, Museum Security, and Collections Management units. He is a scholar of slavery in New York and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Leiden.

• Dr. Iris de Rode, the author of many publications about the French role in the American Revolution, who was recently awarded the Guizot Prize by the Academie Française for her publication in France of the writings of the Marquis de Chastellux, who served as a major general in Rochambeau’s French expeditionary forces during the Revolutionary War. The book, revised for American audiences and in English, will soon to be published by the University of Virginia Press.

• Dr. Roger Panetta, who taught history at Fordham University and has authored numerous articles on the history of Westchester County and New York State. He served as Adjunct Curator for History at the Hudson River Museum and is currently Visiting Professor of History at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus.

• Emily Yankowitz, current Ph.D candidate in American History at Yale University, was our researcher on the history of the Odell farm and the enslaved people who worked on the farm. She also created the finding aid for the Odell family document collection at the Westchester County Historical Society. Emily is currently an editorial assistant for the Papers of Benjamin Franklin at Yale.

On December 12 Susan Jainchill, principal of Aspect 120, presented the OHRH Cultural Landscape Plan to the annual meeting of the Landscape Design Students and Alumni Association at the New York Botanical Gardens. The presentation was warmly received, and the design may be submitted to the New York Association of Landscape Architects award program. We will post her plans on our website in the coming months.
 
The following evening, the Greenburgh Town Board approved the final contract with Steven Tilly Architects for the last phase of the restoration of the house. This contract is fully funded by grants from New York State and will include the execution of the Landscape Plan.
 
Next, the Friends were happy to submit the final report to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) about the restoration of the French doors in the stone section of the house. The eight glass panels of the doors were restored to meet modern safety regulations by a master carpenter, Padriag Brehony, through a grant from the National Society of the DAR. Sponsored by the Hudson River Patriots Chapter of the NSDAR—thank you Philomena Dunn for your support—this grant was one of the first awarded to the Friends. We are grateful for the DAR’s continued encouragement and support.

December ended with the return of an important OHRH artifact. In 1976, a group of women from the Scarsdale Woman’s Club spent hundreds of hours creating a beautiful bicentennial quilt commemorating the role of OHRH in the American Revolution. It was presented to the NY Chapter of SAR forty-seven years ago and displayed briefly, but it was not among the items in the house. Last summer, OHRH board member Marc Cheshire discovered that the quilt had just been sold at auction in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. After much negotiation, the Friends were able to buy it back from the purchaser. We are thrilled to have it safely home and intend to display it prominently in the museum.