CHP To Weigh Fate of Another Home on Dolma Road in Scarsdale

In 2012 the Scarsdale Board of Trustees engaged architectural historians to do a “Cultural Resources Survey” of the homes and buildings of Scarsdale. They provided a comprehensive document about the history of Scarsdale and of many of the notable homes that provide neighborhood character and make Scarsdale unique. Take a look at it here.

At the time, the consultants also delineated a list of “study areas” and recommended that the Village Trustees declare these areas as historic districts so that the homes could be protected from demolition.

One of the areas recommended for preservation was Dolma Road. Here’s what the report says:

“Dolma Road, running from Murray Hill Road to Birchall Road, is a short street lined with exclusive houses on large lots, most erected between 1926 and 1929 (one dates from 1935), primarily for wealthy businessmen and their families. Dolma Road was largely a project of Walter J. Collet, the Scarsdale builder who was responsible for the construction of many substantial houses in the village. Collet claimed that he chose the name Dolma in reference to a mountain range in Bengal, India; just why he made this choice remains a mystery. A long Dolma Road, Collet appears to have been not only the builder, but also the developer. Collet worked closely with the architect Eugene J. Lang, who designed nine of the fifteen houses in the study area. Collet remained the builder of the houses designed by other architects. The Dolma Road houses are large buildings in the American, English, French, and Spanish styles so popular throughout Scarsdale in the 1920s. Among the wealthy owners were life insurance dealer George Hofmann (No. 2); publishers (and, apparently, brothers-in-law) Frank Braucher (No. 4) and Frederick Dolan (No. 6); tobacco merchant George Cooper (No. 8); W. Wallace Lyon (No. 11), Wall Street broker and insurance man; Alden C. Noble (No. 15), chairman of the board of the Merchants Fire Assurance Corporation; Dr. L. T. Webster (No.17), a noted epidemiologist at the Rockefeller Institute; and J. Arthur Bogardus (No. 21), chairman of the board of the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company.

Considering the size and scale of the houses along Dolma Road, it is remarkable that they survive with such integrity. A few entrances have been altered and additions have been sensitively made, but the street retains the ambiance of a prime suburban locale of the early twentieth century.”

Sadly, Village Trustees never took the next step to designate historic districts, and in the thirteen years since the report was published, many of the noted homes and surrounding trees have been taken down by individuals and developers who replaced them with very large homes.

Dolma Road has not been spared and several homes have come down. A notable home at 11 Dolma Road, which the Committee for Historic Preservation and the Scarsdale Board of Trustees deemed worthy of preservation, has been largely abandoned as a case about its fate sits in court.

Now a developer has applied to take down another Dolma Road home at 17 Dolma Road. The house is not as grand as some of the others on the block but is historic none-the-less.

The Committee for Historic Preservation requested an opinion on whether or not it is worthy of preservation from Andrew Dolkart who was one of the authors of the Cultural Resources Survey.
In the report you can read here he notes the identities of the owners, the names of the architects, the architectural provenance of the house and its distinctive features. He calls it “an English Tudor inspired house modeled after the fifteenth century early Tudor manor houses in England,” with “brick laid in Flemish bond,” an “original oak door ornamented with iron boses” and “half timbering.” He notes that the Dolma Road subdivision was a project of Walter Collet and calls it “one of the finest and most cohesive subdivision in the Village of Scarsdale."

The original owner of the house was Dr. Leslie Tillotson Webster who the Scarsdale Inquirer called, “one of Scarsdale’s most distinguished citizens.” He was a successful medical researcher, on the staff of the Rockefeller Institute and “responsible for the establishment of the special branch of the science of epidemics known as “experimental epidemiology.”

Dolkart notes that the home meets some of the criteria for preservation but it is “not the strongest candidate for preservation as an individual building.” He says, “it is important within the historic group along Dolma Road, although several other houses in this development have recently been demolished.”

The application to raze it was filed by a developer who is not the owner of the house on the Scarsdale Village website. The owner’s signature is not included with the application, nor is there a document that shows that the developer is the contract vendee.

Scarsdale’s Village Code defines the owner as, “The owner of the property in question or a person with a legal interest in such property, such as a contract vendee.”

The Committee for Historic Preservation will consider the application at their meeting on Tuesday night January 21 at 7 pm.