White Plains' Best Kept Secret: Percy Grainger Home

It’s a party at Percy Grainger’s! On Friday evening, May 12 Percy Grainger America invites you to celebrate the recent designation of the Grainger home at 7 Cromwell Place as a local historic landmark by the White Plains Historic Preservation Commission. Tours through the home are available as White Plains Mayor Thomas Roach and Historical Commission Chair Robert Hoch dedicate the home.

The Percy Grainger Home and Studio is an exceptionally significant local landmark because of its association with the life and work of Percy Grainger (1882-1961), composer, pianist, collector of folk songs, and writer. For forty years, from 1921 until his death in 1961, Grainger occupied the house at 7 Cromwell Place, White Plains, using it for his residence, practice studio, and laboratory for his avant-garde musical compositions and experimental music machines.

“We are so pleased to have the support of the Historic Preservation Commission for this important site, “noted Barry Peter Ould, president of the International Percy Grainger Society and board member of Percy Grainger America, “This recognition will allow us to have added focus and direction, and include the voices of many as we strive to preserve this landmark.” Mr. Ould, of Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, is a music publisher, and an Internationally known expert on the music of Percy Grainger.

Percy Grainger was a man of many seasons — not only a composer and pianist but a musical folklorist, wind band arranger, polyglot, watercolorist, early music expert, clothing designer, prodigious letter writer, essayist, and philosophical thinker. His popular works like “Country Gardens” and “Molly on the Shore” were best-sellers of the early twentieth century music world, while his experiments in avant-garde music anticipated many artistic developments in the later twentieth century and beyond. Today his music is performed even more widely than during his lifetime.

This historic house, built in 1893, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 8, 1993, was originally the residence of David Cromwell, banker and prominent local citizen. Cromwell served as Westchester County Treasurer and Chief Officer of the then Village of White Plains. He was president of several local banks, most notably the Home Savings Bank. Cromwell built the two streets which connect Maple Avenue and East Post Road. Chester Avenue, parallel and to the east of Cromwell Place, built and deeded to White Plains in 1891, was named for his son John Chester Cromwell. Chester later lived in a house there, which still stands behind the Percy Grainger House. He died in 1907, age 30, while fighting a fire on Main Street, only days after he was married.

Percy Grainger America was formed to preserve the legacy, home, and artifacts of Percy Grainger. Currently the organization is in progress with a restoration of the physical structure of the house and an enlargement of the display of artifacts that render Percy Grainger a living presence to a new generation of visitors.