Historic Rivertowns House No Longer for Sale

There are plenty of majestic, historical homes in the Rivertowns, but very few have a large historical marker placed by New York State standing on the front lawn. One of the most significant houses in the Hudson River Valley, Villa Lewaro, had been up for sale by owner Harold Doley, but has recently been taken off the market.

Anyone who had plunked down the $6.8 million asking price would have received the keys to a legendary property. Built in 1918 by Madame C. J. Walker, a successful businesswoman and advocate for African-American causes, the expansive house passed to her daughter, A’Lelia, after Madame Walker died at the home in 1919.

Considered to be the first woman in the United States to become a self-made millionaire, Madame Walker had friends in high places, including civil rights leader  Booker T. Washington, who visited Irvington to raise money at The Presbyterian Church, said Doley. Modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan performed a few steps on the front lawn and singer Enrico Caruso named the house after the first syllables in A’Lelia’s birth name, Lelia Walker Robinson. 

After her mother’s death, A’Lelia ingrained herself in the burgeoning African-American arts scene during the 1920’s known as the Harlem Renaissance. She turned her townhouse in Harlem and the villa in Irvington into salons where artists, writers and intellectuals like Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston gathered for big bashes that contributed to the decade’s legacy as the Roaring Twenties. Poet Langston Hughes, who once called Walker the “joy goddess of Harlem,” enjoyed imbibing and writing on the walls of the so-called Nile Room upstairs, said Doley.

But the lavish weekend-long parties eventually came to an end. The stock market crash forced Walker to sell her valuable art collection. She died in 1931 at age 46. At her funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell presided and educator Mary McLeod Bethune delivered a eulogy. Langston Hughes read a poem entitled “A’Lelia”: “So all who love laughter/And joy and light/Let your prayers be as roses/For this queen of the night.”

The home passed into the hands of a fraternal and charitable organization and became known as the Annie E. Poth Home for Convalescent and Aged Members of the Companions of the Forest in America.

“These were mainly elderly women whose husbands had been in the forestry business and owned it for almost 60 years,” said Doley. “They did nothing to the electrical the plumbing and fixed whatever broke that needed attention. They didn’t hurt the walls or the floors, but they did get snookered by a roofer, who put on modern tiles.”

Doley tracked down the company that had originally put in the Spanish-style tiles and began restoring the 35-room home, though he did gut the basement kitchen and put in modern amenities. In the late-1980’s the home passed into the hands of a private buyer, who gave up on the house and sold it to Doley in 1993.

Doley’s personal story is nearly as interesting as the home’s history. A native of New Orleans, he founded Doley Securities in 1975, the oldest African American-owned investment banking firm in the nation. He moved to New York part time in the mid-1970’s, when he became the first African-American to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

President Ronald Reagan appointed him as Ambassador to the African Development Bank from 1983 to 1985. Since then he has become involved with many educational causes, including his own foundation. He knew about the home and its legacy and determined to buy it with the intention of undertaking a sweeping restoration.

Though Doley isn’t nearly as social as A’lelia Walker—though he is sociable—he has thrown a few soirees of note, including several fundraisers over the years along with parties honoring Juneteenth, viewed by African-Americans in the south as an unofficial Independence Day.

Doley is finishing up a book about the Walkers in conjunction with the owners of the Madame C.J. Walker Company in Indianapolis, which is still in business. He plans to shop it to the big New York City publishing firms with his agent, Timothy Hays, who lives in Hastings.

“I always wished that the house would be a museum one day or that some athlete or entertainer might want to possibly come in,” he said. “But those options didn’t develop.”

For now, he and his wife live in the main house. He has filled the place with art, including many African sculptures and paintings of African-American artists. Framed photographs of A’Lelia and Mrs. Walker adorn the music room.

The museum option is still on the table, although most of Walker’s possessions have scattered. “From time to time, I’ve gotten calls from people who have rugs and there’s a man in Larchmont who has the actual gold leaf piano that was in the music room,” said Doley. “I got a call Mrs. William Randolph Hearst IV, who bought some of the original rugs.”

He also bought several pictures of the Walkers from the company in Indianapolis and has tried to match the décor in some of the rooms to the way things were in the mansion’s heyday. 

“I’ve truly appreciated being here,” he said. “You can’t help but think about the parties and the dinners and the business and political meetings. It’s a legendary house and it’s the only home I ever wanted to own and live in.”