and sliding doors between every space. History Ohio native James Jennings McComb's wealth came from his invention of the ties that secured cotton as it emerged from balers. In the 1860s he came to Dobbs Ferry, where he sent his three daughters to the Misses' Masters School, named for its founding sisters in 1877. He bought the current property and eventually moved his family to the small Park Cottage (still standing) near the school's Clinton Avenue location to shorten his daughters' walk to school. The octagonal library was first built as an addition to Park Cottage, to complement an octagonal library desk McComb had bought in Europe. He was soon dissatisfied with how poorly the new room integrated with the rest of the house, and hired the New York firm of Buchman & Deisler to design a new house connected to the library that would better match it. McComb and his family lived in Estherwood from its completion in 1895 to his death in 1901. He had continued to acquire nearby property and rent it to the school, and in 1910 the school bought it all, including Estherwood and the carriage house, from his heirs. It has made few changes to the building, primarily adding an elevator in 1949. Estherwood was used as a dormitory for many years; today its upper floors serve as faculty apartments and the main floor is used for special events and school functions. Aesthetics Estherwood is a rare residential commission for Albert Buchman, better known for commercial and institutional structures such as the New York World Tower and the Student Building at Barnard College. He brought to the commission a breadth of architectural knowledge and an awareness of the ostentatious tastes of the new rich of the Gilded Age. In its lavish use of materials and elements that would be characterized as conspicuous consumption, Estherwood has been compared to Richard Morris Hunt's The Breakers – the Vanderbilt family summer home in Newport, Rhode Island – that had been completed only three years before, attracting much notice as the most expensive house ever built at that time. See also National Register of Historic Places listings in southern Westchester County, New York References Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) National Register of Historic Places in Westchester County, New York Houses completed in 1895 Carriage houses in the United States Houses in