Park Archives: Grey Towers National Historic Site

Grey Towers was completed in 1886 by James Pinchot, a wealthy wallpaper merchant from New York City, born and raised in Milford. At nineteen, with no room in the family business, James left Milford to seek other opportunities, acquiring enough fortune to retire at age forty-four. Civic minded and a supporter of the arts, James and his wife, Mary, connected themselves with many influential people, among them Richard Morris Hunt, a leading architect of the era. Hunt designed their summer home to utilize both local materials and reflect the French heritage of the Pinchot family, who first settled in Milford in 1818. For two decades the Pinchots and their children enjoyed numerous summers at Grey Towers, entertaining guests for afternoon teas and dinner parties. Here James, disturbed by destructive logging practices then prevalent in the country, encouraged his eldest son, Gifford Pinchot, to consider a career in forestry.

Heeding his father's advice, and born with a love of nature, Gifford Pinchot went to Yale in 1885. Though forestry schools did not yet exist in the United States, he took what few related courses he could. After graduating in 1889, and already fluent in French, Gifford went abroad to study at the French Forestry School in Nancy, France. A year later, impatient to return home, he cut short his studies to confront the forest devastation then sweeping across the country.

In the next two decades, Pinchot raised scientific forestry and natural resource conservation from a radical experiment to a nationwide movement. He became head of the Division of Forestry in 1898. His good friend, President Theodore Roosevelt, later named him Chief Forester of the newly created United States Forest Service, an organization guided by Pinchot's principle, "the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run." His magnetic personality and leadership style ignited the new organization. During his tenure, national forests tripled in size to 193 million acres. Roosevelt, with Pinchot as his strategist, considered conservation his greatest contribution to American domestic policy.

In 1914, with Theodore Roosevelt in attendance, Gifford Pinchot married Cornielia Bryce, daughter of journalist and politician, Lloyd Bryce, and granddaughter of inventor and philanthropist, Peter Cooper. Failing in bids for the United States Senate, Pinchot eventually was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1922. Cornelia's influence over women voters was essential to his election.

Gifford Pinchot is widely regarded as one of Pennsylvania's most popular and effective governors. During his two terms, the second beginning in 1931, he wiped out the state's $30 million deficit, battled to regulate public utilities, sought relief for the unemployed, and paved rural roads to "get the farmer out of the mud."

Gifford and Cornelia met while members of the Progressive Party during Theodore Roosevelt's run for President in 1912. During the 1920's and 1930's, Cornelia ran unsuccessfully for Congress three times. Her campaigns focused on education and the labor rights of women and children. Someone commented that she "was equally at home on the picket line with striking workers as she was a gracious hostess at a formal reception."

James Pinchot believed he had created no slums, fouled no rivers, and wasted no resources while obtaining his wealth. Widely respected, he helped push through the construction of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty and, with others, founded and financed the National Academy of Design and the American Museum of Natural History. With his sons and wife, Mary, he endowed the Yale School of Forestry in 1900 and began at Milford the first forest experiment station in the nation to encourage reforestation of denuded lands. Until 1926, Yale held summer forestry camps for graduate students on his Grey Towers estate.

Mary Pinchot married James in 1864. Well schooled in manners and ways of the socially elite, she was the daughter of Amos Eno, a real estate investor and one of New York City's wealthiest men. With travels abroad, private tutors and prominent family associates, the Pinchot's three children never strayed far from the influence of their parents, developing strong moral and intellectual beliefs.

Antoinette, Gilford's younger sister married a British diplomat and focused on the social causes in Europe. During World War I, she organized and ran the American hospital in Ris Orange, France.

Amos, a lawyer and youngest of the three, served on the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, helped organize the Progressive Party, and was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1963, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, the son of Gifford and Cornelia, donated Grey Towers and 102 acres to the USDA Forest Service, the federal agency founded by his father and which now administers the site cooperatively with the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, a national, non-profit group committed to leadership in forest policy, thought and action. The institute, dedicated by President Kennedy at Grey Towers on September 24, 1963, seeks to further evolve and apply the conservation values and philosophies initially prescribed by Gifford Pinchot. Today, conferences and seminars at the estate bring together a diversity of leading conservation and environmental thinkers to help guide the future of natural resource conservation.

The contents of brochures, site bulletins and trading cards (denoted with a colored caption) can be viewed by clicking on the cover. Most modern-day brochures, however, are cover only (denoted by a white caption) due to photograph copyrights. These items are historical in scope and are intended for educational purposes only; they are not meant as an aid for travel planning. The dates under each brochure do not reflect the complete range of years that a particular brochure was issued.

Date Unknown	cover only Date Unknown	Date Unknown

Conservation Education Programs Date Unknown	Forestry Trail Date Unknown	Self-Guided Landscape Tour Date Unknown	Laurel Hill Cemetery July 2006	The Pinchots and Milford: A Walking Tour Date Unknown	Napoleon May 2017
Traveler's Guide to Grey Towers Date Unknown	The Trees of Grey Towers August 2012