From a 2007 article that I somehow missed:
BARBARA W. TUCHMAN used to hike up to a tiny wooden cabin, no larger than 100 square feet, on her Cos Cob estate, to sift through notecards of research and type the history books that would make her famous. She could look across the valley from there and watch the deer gathering on the opposite hill at dusk.
Ms. Tuchman twice won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the best known historians of the 20th century. Her greatest legacy will always be those books, which have sat on the nightstands of presidents. But this land in Cos Cob, she felt, was another kind of legacy. Near the end of her life, she feared that her three daughters would sell it and she wrote them impassioned letters imploring them to keep it in the family.
It was not to be.
A few years after Ms. Tuchman's husband died, two of her daughters sued the third, attempting to divide the land and sell their portions. The dispute has lasted four years.
Earlier this month, a judge divided the 43.4 acres that remain of the estate. Cos Cob is part of Greenwich and the town plans to buy about two-thirds of the property, while Alma, 56, Ms. Tuchman's youngest daughter, will continue to own and live on the 12.52 acres left. She will likely appeal the ruling.
Barbara Tuchman's father, Maurice Wertheim, a wealthy banker, bought the approximately 120-acre estate in 1912, the same year she was born. She was raised in New York, but spent weekends and summers in Cos Cob riding horses, swimming in the pond and enjoying the natural beauty of the land. Greenwich residents sometimes got to enjoy the property, too. John B. Margenot Jr., a longtime Greenwich resident and former first selectman, said he remembers skating at the Tuchmans' pond with other children.
''They were good about things like that,'' he said.
Ms. Tuchman graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933 and married Dr. Lester Reginald Tuchman, a New York internist, in 1939. Around the end of World War II, the couple moved into a building that held a chicken coop and potting house on the Cos Cob property. The Tuchmans still lived in New York, but went to the house on weekends and during the summer. Their three children rode horses in a ring next to the house and rowed a canoe to an island in the middle of the seven-acre pond for picnics.
The telegram informing Ms. Tuchman that she had won her first Pulitzer Prize still hangs in her study in the house, next to a picture of former President Jimmy Carter with a note attached assuring Ms. Tuchman that the president was reading her book.
Though the world was lining up at the door, the family became less apt to open the property to members of the community as time went on: ''It wasn't any longer a small-town community,'' Alma Tuchman said.
Late in life, Lester and Barbara Tuchman moved to Cos Cob for good and Ms. Tuchman continued working on her books. She still had a book on the best-seller list when she died in 1989.
While she was still alive, Ms. Tuchman had deeded the property to her daughters to share evenly.
Alma Tuchman retired from her job as a journalist and moved to the property in the late 1980's, but her sisters lived in other parts of the country. Lucy Eisenberg, a retired lawyer, lives in Los Angeles. Another sister, Jessica Mathews, is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Ms. Eisenberg said she did not want to comment about the property. Ms. Mathews did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Barbara Tuchman insisted nothing be done with the property for 10 years after her death, Alma Tuchman said. She wanted the land to remain in the family's hands because it had given her ''a basic happiness and comfort ever since our establishment here as a family,'' Barbara wrote in a ''letter to my family'' in 1988. In the letter, she specifically warned against selling it to the town to use ''as a park or so-called 'open space.'''
But after the 10 years passed, the dispute began, pitting the sisters against each other. Alma Tuchman wanted to remain living on the land and preserve the entire parcel for the family, but her sisters wanted to claim their own portions, eventually deciding to sell them to the town.
With the sisters unable to resolve differences, Ms. Eisenberg and Ms. Mathews sued Alma Tuchman in October 2000. The case dragged on: The file has five parts and is about six inches thick, its own epic history.
Ms. Eisenberg and her husband, David, have created a trust to control their piece of property. In June 2001, the town of Greenwich entered into an agreement with Ms. Mathews and the Eisenbergs to purchase their share of the property for $8.67 million. In May 2002, the town intervened in the lawsuit to protect its interest.
The decision came back Aug. 4. The judge, David R. Tobin, split the land into two pieces, giving about two-thirds to Ms. Eisenberg and her sister and one-third to Alma Tuchman. Her 12.52-acre portion, which will be maintained as a private estate, is worth $9,525,000, according to Judge Tobin's ruling.
The land given to the two other sisters is 30.74 acres and is worth $18,050,000, the judge said. All of this is subject to appeal. The Eisenbergs and Ms. Mathews have agreed to make a charitable donation to the town to make up the difference between the value of the land and the price they have already negotiated.
Alma Tuchman said she no longer speaks to her two sisters. Barbara Tuchman, she said, would be ''appalled and sickened'' by what happened.
Jim Lash, the first selectman of Greenwich, said the town planned to review the ruling once it is final and decide what to do. He said he foresees three options for the land: open space, playing fields, or low-income housing.
''There are a number of possibilities there,'' he said last week.
''Over all it's very admirable in concept for the town to spend so much money acquiring open space, but I think it's also irresponsible to acquire land that you cannot take care of, and I think it's clear that the town can't take care of what it already has acquired,'' she said. ''Open space becomes nobody's land and nobody's responsibility.''
Wyndygoul's "manor" house, located at the top of a one-quarter mile uphill drive, was designed by Seton in a style that reflected his unique personal architectural ideals, later carried out in three other houses as well. It combined the styles of American western stucco and stone with British Tudor and was a three-story construction, with low, beamed ceilings, thick walls and wood cornices, a large bay window, and generally simple, somewhat boxy lines.
Circa 1908. "Wyndygoul, home of E.T. Seton." The writer-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, at his Cos Cob, Connecticut, estate.
BARBARA W. TUCHMAN used to hike up to a tiny wooden cabin, no larger than 100 square feet, on her Cos Cob estate, to sift through notecards of research and type the history books that would make her famous. She could look across the valley from there and watch the deer gathering on the opposite hill at dusk.
Ms. Tuchman twice won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the best known historians of the 20th century. Her greatest legacy will always be those books, which have sat on the nightstands of presidents. But this land in Cos Cob, she felt, was another kind of legacy. Near the end of her life, she feared that her three daughters would sell it and she wrote them impassioned letters imploring them to keep it in the family.
A few years after Ms. Tuchman's husband died, two of her daughters sued the third, attempting to divide the land and sell their portions. The dispute has lasted four years.
Earlier this month, a judge divided the 43.4 acres that remain of the estate. Cos Cob is part of Greenwich and the town plans to buy about two-thirds of the property, while Alma, 56, Ms. Tuchman's youngest daughter, will continue to own and live on the 12.52 acres left. She will likely appeal the ruling.
Barbara Tuchman's father, Maurice Wertheim, a wealthy banker, bought the approximately 120-acre estate in 1912, the same year she was born. She was raised in New York, but spent weekends and summers in Cos Cob riding horses, swimming in the pond and enjoying the natural beauty of the land. Greenwich residents sometimes got to enjoy the property, too. John B. Margenot Jr., a longtime Greenwich resident and former first selectman, said he remembers skating at the Tuchmans' pond with other children.
''They were good about things like that,'' he said.
Ms. Tuchman graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933 and married Dr. Lester Reginald Tuchman, a New York internist, in 1939. Around the end of World War II, the couple moved into a building that held a chicken coop and potting house on the Cos Cob property. The Tuchmans still lived in New York, but went to the house on weekends and during the summer. Their three children rode horses in a ring next to the house and rowed a canoe to an island in the middle of the seven-acre pond for picnics.
Meanwhile, Barbara Tuchman became famous. Her book ''Guns of August,'' about the beginning of World War I, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962. She ''treated herself'' to the writer's cabin with its stone fireplace using the proceeds from one of her books, said Alma Tuchman. When she was deep into a book, she would climb the hill to the cabin at 7 a.m. and stay there for the next 12 hours, save for a trip back to the house for a sandwich, which she would carry back on a tray, Alma Tuchman recalled.
The telegram informing Ms. Tuchman that she had won her first Pulitzer Prize still hangs in her study in the house, next to a picture of former President Jimmy Carter with a note attached assuring Ms. Tuchman that the president was reading her book.
Though the world was lining up at the door, the family became less apt to open the property to members of the community as time went on: ''It wasn't any longer a small-town community,'' Alma Tuchman said.
Late in life, Lester and Barbara Tuchman moved to Cos Cob for good and Ms. Tuchman continued working on her books. She still had a book on the best-seller list when she died in 1989.
While she was still alive, Ms. Tuchman had deeded the property to her daughters to share evenly.
Alma Tuchman retired from her job as a journalist and moved to the property in the late 1980's, but her sisters lived in other parts of the country. Lucy Eisenberg, a retired lawyer, lives in Los Angeles. Another sister, Jessica Mathews, is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Ms. Eisenberg said she did not want to comment about the property. Ms. Mathews did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Barbara Tuchman insisted nothing be done with the property for 10 years after her death, Alma Tuchman said. She wanted the land to remain in the family's hands because it had given her ''a basic happiness and comfort ever since our establishment here as a family,'' Barbara wrote in a ''letter to my family'' in 1988. In the letter, she specifically warned against selling it to the town to use ''as a park or so-called 'open space.'''
But after the 10 years passed, the dispute began, pitting the sisters against each other. Alma Tuchman wanted to remain living on the land and preserve the entire parcel for the family, but her sisters wanted to claim their own portions, eventually deciding to sell them to the town.
With the sisters unable to resolve differences, Ms. Eisenberg and Ms. Mathews sued Alma Tuchman in October 2000. The case dragged on: The file has five parts and is about six inches thick, its own epic history.
Ms. Eisenberg and her husband, David, have created a trust to control their piece of property. In June 2001, the town of Greenwich entered into an agreement with Ms. Mathews and the Eisenbergs to purchase their share of the property for $8.67 million. In May 2002, the town intervened in the lawsuit to protect its interest.
The decision came back Aug. 4. The judge, David R. Tobin, split the land into two pieces, giving about two-thirds to Ms. Eisenberg and her sister and one-third to Alma Tuchman. Her 12.52-acre portion, which will be maintained as a private estate, is worth $9,525,000, according to Judge Tobin's ruling.
The land given to the two other sisters is 30.74 acres and is worth $18,050,000, the judge said. All of this is subject to appeal. The Eisenbergs and Ms. Mathews have agreed to make a charitable donation to the town to make up the difference between the value of the land and the price they have already negotiated.
Alma Tuchman said she no longer speaks to her two sisters. Barbara Tuchman, she said, would be ''appalled and sickened'' by what happened.
The town has not yet decided what it will do with the land, though it has expressed interest in allowing it to remain undeveloped as open space. The town has already purchased the adjacent Pomerance property, part of Mr. Wertheim's original estate and deeded to another one of his daughters. The town allows the public to use it. The parcel owned by Ms. Mathews and the Eisenberg trust could be added to the Pomerance parcel to create one larger piece of open space.
Jim Lash, the first selectman of Greenwich, said the town planned to review the ruling once it is final and decide what to do. He said he foresees three options for the land: open space, playing fields, or low-income housing.
''There are a number of possibilities there,'' he said last week.
Alma Tuchman, a conservationist who talks about the threatened species on the property and the various kinds of weeds clinging to the trees, is concerned that even if the town decided to keep the land as open space, it won't spend money on maintenance. The Pomerance property has already been overtaken in spots by weeds, and last week garbage and a discarded beer can floated in the pond.
''Over all it's very admirable in concept for the town to spend so much money acquiring open space, but I think it's also irresponsible to acquire land that you cannot take care of, and I think it's clear that the town can't take care of what it already has acquired,'' she said. ''Open space becomes nobody's land and nobody's responsibility.''
----------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment