The Lente House is the last of the three ruins I visited in Cold Spring. At the time the house was owned by the local Catholic Church and was largely boarded up, but not well-kept. Located in the middle of the village, it stood prominent on a small hill by itself. Since then, several modern luxury houses have been built on the former estate, but the house was given over to the village by the developer and plans are afoot to save the brick mansion  A restoration project is underway.

    The Lente House was built in the early 1850s and apparently the mansard roof is a later alteration from an earlier hipped roof.. Its designer was the well-known architect Richard Upjohn, who resided in Garrison, not far from Cold Spring. The house appears on the F.W. Beers Atlases of 1867 and 1868 as the residence of Dr. F.D. Lente and shown as "Grove." Frederick Lente was a surgeon at the nearby West Point Foundry, a short walk from the Lente house. Lente was married to the daughter of William Kemble, whose residence, "the Cottage," can be seen from the Cold Spring train station today. 

   Later, under ownership of the Catholic Church, the house was known as "the Sisters' house," as it served as a convent. But it sat abandoned in the last two decades of the 20th century and weather and vandalism took a great toll on the interior. Yet the house survived, although the landscaping was obliterated (illegally, some residents say), by the developer of the new homes. Despite the advanced state of decay, a group of forward thinking residents is up to the challenge of restoring and reusing this gem. 


LINK:
Friends of the Grove - A new website with information about the restoration of the Lente House.