Editor’s Note: Shadowcliff was demolished this month. This article is republished to remember the remarkable peace organization that called the estate home from 1957 to 2017.
In 1957, eight years after the death of Shadowcliff’s owner, Eleanor Manville Ford, one of America’s most influential peace organizations made the mansion its national headquarters. For the next sixty years, the Fellowship of Reconciliation transformed a Gilded Age estate into a center for nonviolent activism, civil rights, and international peace efforts.
Founded in 1915, the Fellowship of Reconciliation helped shape many of the twentieth century’s most important social movements. Among those associated with FOR were Nobel Peace Prize laureates Jane Addams and Martin Luther King Jr., along with civil rights leaders Bayard Rustin and James Farmer. Members also helped establish both the American Civil Liberties Union in 1915 and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. The list of local Nyack members alone would fill an entire article.
“This is the house where Martin Luther King would have slept. Were it not for an assassin in Memphis in 1968, our nation’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning champion of nonviolence would have made it to Nyack. The purpose of his visit would have been to commune with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.”
Bill Batson, Nyack Sketch Log
Founding of FOR
Henry Hodgkin, an English Quaker, and Friedrich Sigmund-Schultze, a German Lutheran, founded FOR on the eve of World War I with a mission to work together for peace even though their countries were at war. In 1915, 68 pacifists formed the American branch, which included future Nobel laureate Jane Addams and peace activist A. J. Muste. FOR took up the challenge of trying to keep America out of the war. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) grew out of FOR’s program for conscientious objectors.
Notable Early Efforts
In 1918, FOR established the Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, NY in conjunction with the American Federation of Labor. FOR staffers James Farmer and George Houser, along with Bernice Fisher, founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1947. The two groups sponsored the first Freedom Ride against racial segregation.
Civil Rights
FOR remained at the forefront of the nonviolent civil rights protests over the years. FOR member Glenn Smiley, a white Methodist minister and the first resident of FOR at Shadowcliff, rode with Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy on the first interracial bus ride in Montgomery, Alabama, after the Montgomery Bus Boycott started by Rosa Parks in 1955.
Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story – A Comic Book
In 1957, shortly after moving to Shadowcliff, FOR published Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story to publicize the message of integration. Al Capp and other artists worked on this remarkable “comic book”. FOR printed and distributed some 250,000 copies. John Lewis, a famous civil rights legislator, said the comic book “was like a blueprint” for understanding nonviolent, direct-action protest techniques. Reading it today, reminds us of the great debt our country owes to Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and others for moving the country out of the Jim Crow era.
“You have done a marvelous job of grasping the underlying truth and philosophy of the movement”
Martin Luther KIng, Jr.
Sample pages from the Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story
FOR Moves to Shadowcliff
As FOR’s need for more office and meeting space grew, they looked to move out of their cramped quarters in Manhattan. Conrad Lynn, a civil rights attorney who worked in real estate, identified Shadowcliff as a potential home base in 1957. FOR paid less than the asking price and acquired the mansion for $35,000. After Eleanor Manville Ford’s death, a live-in translation service occupied the 44-room estate. FOR filled the house quickly. At one time, some of the 40 beds on the second and third floors had to be converted into offices during the Vietnam anti-war protests.
Local Conflicts
The relocation of FOR was not without its conflicts. During the heyday of air raid drills, civil defense inspectors declared Shadowcliff to be the finest bomb shelter in the entire country. It turned out Eleanor Manville Ford had installed a fourteen-inch-thick reinforced concrete ceiling between the basement and the first floor to prevent fires. Al Hassler, Executive Secretary of FOR, firmly turned down its use as a public shelter. Hassler put up a sign: “This House Has No Fallout Shelter. Peace is our only security.” The sign went viral among American pacifists.
For over 18 years, FOR and Upper Nyack battled over their religious property tax exemption before FOR won an exemption. Housed within a strong conservative bastion of 1950s Rockland County, residents expressed reservations about a liberal religious pacifist organization in their midst. Others, under the influence of McCarthyism, insisted that FOR was under the control of the Soviet Union. FOR was undeterred by these early conflicts and later became an important part of the community. Tea magnate Stephen Leeman and the owner of High Tor vineyards, Richard Voigt, became early members.
The Peace Room
In 1958, Paul and Jo Peabody helped organize the Peace Room located in the former first-floor front parlor. It became a symbolic center for important FOR actions. Here, in 1963, Alabama civil rights leaders met with the National Council of Churches. During the meeting, they learned of the fatal bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. In the Peace Room, FOR helped coordinate two massive anti-war mobilizations in Washington to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Decades later, the Nuclear Freeze movement had its beginnings here in the 1980s.
Leaving Shadowcliff
Over the years, FOR continued the fight against racial injustice, poverty, and war. By 2017, FOR had become a more geographically dispersed organization, and the need for a central location in a digital world lessened. FOR moved its headquarters to Stony Point.
An Unending Saga
FOR’s work did not end with its departure from Shadowcliff. We continue to see the organization’s long reach. In June 2024, for example, James M. Lawson Jr. died at the age of 95. A longtime FOR member, Lawson helped organize the Freedom Riders, who endured beatings and arrests while challenging segregation on interstate buses in 1961. He later became the chief strategist for the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Lawson’s life is one example of the determined nonviolent activism that changed America forever. Although Shadowcliff itself is now gone, the ideals nurtured within its walls continue to shape the nation.
From the forthcoming book The Barons of Broadway
An edited and expanded version of this article will appear in Mike Hays’s upcoming history of Upper Nyack’s Gilded Age estates
About the author
Mike Hays has lived in the Nyacks for 38 years. After a career as an executive at McGraw-Hill Education in New York City, he now focuses on researching, writing, and interpreting local history.
He serves as Treasurer and past President of the Historical Society of the Nyacks. In addition, he is also a Trustee of the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center and Historian for the Village of Upper Nyack. In these roles, he works with community partners to preserve historic resources and expand public understanding of the area’s past.
Since 2017, he has written the popular Nyack People & Places column for Nyack News & Views. The series chronicles the history, architecture, and personalities of the lower Hudson Valley.
Hays has also developed museum exhibitions, written interpretive materials, and led well-attended walking tours that bring Nyack’s history to life.
He is married to Bernie Richey. He enjoys cycling, history walks, and winters in Florida. You can follow him on Instagram at @UpperNyackMike.
Editor’s note: This article is sponsored by Sun River Health and Ellis Sotheby’s International Realty. Sun River Health is a network of 43 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) providing primary, dental, pediatric, OB-GYN, and behavioral health care to over 245,000 patients annually. Ellis Sotheby’s International Realty is the lower Hudson Valley’s Leader in Luxury. Located in the charming Hudson River village of Nyack, approximately 22 miles from New York City. Our agents are passionate about listing and selling extraordinary properties in the Lower Hudson Valley, including Rockland and Orange Counties, New York.
