Great Moments in Chappaqua: Chappaqua Mountain Institute
July 16, 2010
by N. O’Neil
1870: The Chappaqua Mountain Institute opens. A Quaker boarding school, it drew students locally and from other nearby towns. The school closed in 1908 and the property was sold to The Children’s Aid Society, which operated it as a convalescent home for city children with tuberculosis.
The building burned down in the late 1960s, but the site continued to function as the Wagon Wheel Camp serving disabled children. The last surviving CMI wool beanie is carefully preserved at the New Castle Historical Society. They say on dark nights on Chappaqua Mountain you can still hear childish voices reciting the multiplication tables.
The fire that destroyed the former Milbank-Anderson Home of the Children’s Aid Society, originally constructed as the Chappaqua Mountain Institute, burned to the ground around 1977. I remember the Chappaqua Fire Department rolled in kegs of beer and food for a day or three to fight what was probably the largest structure fire in Chappaqua history. Many residents gathered to watch the bathtubs crash through the burned out floors from the top stories, it was quite a sight. Today, if you drive in the Wagon Road Camp entrance the old driveway to the right led up to the circle in front of the main building that burned.
As a child in the 60’s, I recall my Mother taking us there to deliver gifts at Christmas to what we children thought was an orphanage. I remember going in and seeing the rows of children eating lunch at long tables in a very large room to the left of the hallway in the main entrance. For decades we skated on the pond in front of the property that was flooded every winter by the fire department just for winter sports, Gedney Park had a rope-tow ski hill back then, too. Old Chappaqua was great!
