BARROW MANSION

The historic Barrow Mansion tells the story of multiple generations of people who came to Jersey City in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to better their lives, many of whom succeeded.

But the Mansion also tells the story of the lives of extended families and ethnic community groups in Jersey City in the same period.

The story of the birth and life of the Barrow Mansion is closely intertwined with that of its lost identical twin, the Van Vorst Mansion. Together, with their adjoining garden between them, this pair had two main roles when they were created and in the time that the extended Barrow/Van Vorst family lived in them: 1838-1868.

The first role of the houses and their garden was as an extended family compound for the families of two sisters from a New York family of Dutch background: Eliza Brower Barrow and Sarah S. Brower Van Vorst. William Barrow, a well-respected and wealthy New York medical doctor and surgeon, purchased the property for his half of the compound in August 1835, the same month that his sister-in-law Sarah Brower Van Vorst died. She had been the direct link between him and the seller, Cornelius Van Vorst, but the Barrows and Van Vorsts continued with what had probably been planned for some time. Eliza Barrow continued close connections to her nieces and nephews through to the end of her life, leaving legacies in her will to all of them, even those who were born to Cornelius’s second wife Antoinette Roosevelt Van Vorst.

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a history

Family compound era.

Photo: Andrew Scholtz