from Switzerland in 1854, and opened a
successful French restaurant in 1857.
The restaurant had prospered, bol­
stered by the largest wine importing
business in the country, and a second
Mouquin restaurant, known as
Mouquin’s Uptown, was opened at the
height of the Gilded Age in 1898. Henri
and his brother Louis managed the sec­
ond restaurant for their father in what
had been the old Knickerbocker Club
on Sixth Avenue and 28th Street.
The original downtown restaurant
is credited with introducing onion soup
and bouillabaisse to New Yorkers.
More important, it taught the
American public how to appreciate fine
wine at reasonable prices. Located on
Ann Streets and taking up the whole
block through to Fulton Street, the
restaurant was a favorite haunt of writ­
ers, newspapermen, politicians and
Wall Street tycoons. Charles A. Dana of
the Sun, Horace Greeley of the Tribune
and James Gordon Bennett of the
Herald were among them.
Madame Jeanne Louise Mouquin,
an attractive redhead, was reportedly
having an affair with the manager of
the chicken farm, a Monsieur Leon L.
Chevanney, on nights when her hus­
band sent word that he would be work­
ing late at the restaurant. One night
he returned home unexpectedly, sur­
prising his wife. Monsieur Chevanney
escaped by jumping out a second story
window. In November of 1900, the
scandal hit the newspapers. In retalia­
tion, Madame Mouquin told the news­
papers that her husband had had an
affair with the maid while they were
living in Hoboken, New Jersey. At the
time of her unwanted pregnancy, the
maid blamed the coachman. Later,
after the baby was stillborn, the maid
confessed to her mistress that
Monsieur Mouquin had fathered the
child. Newspapers hinted that there
would be a divorce.
No one knows how the marriage
recovered. Jeanne Louise later recalled
that they used to admire John Ferdon’s
house from the train on the way from
Nanuet to New York. When her hus­
band learned it was for sale, he bought
it as a surprise for his wife. In 1902, it
needed a lot of work, and the couple set
about renovating and restoring.
The Mouquins destroyed a large
marble fireplace in the basement to
install a coal furnace, the first central
heating to the house. They put in elec­
tricity and the fiftieth phone in Piermont.
The Ferdons had running water by 1873,
but the Mouquins modernized the indoor
plumbing and bathrooms. One claw foot
tub dates from February 1904. Each bed­
room received a sink to replace the tradi­
tional pitcher and washbasin. There
were three pull chain toilets and a base­
ment toilet for servants.
The Mouquins took their French
cooking seriously. The kitchen was
moved upstairs to a first floor back
room that had served as Mr. Ferdon’s
library. Another fireplace was replaced
by a 48-inch, professional size, cast iron
cook stove from the Cosmopolitan
Range Company, dated June 4,1889. It
burned coal. The Mouquins bought it
used from the Astor Hotel when the
hotel switched to gas fired stoves. They
installed a wine rack in the basement
room cooled by the natural spring.
A new, imported mahogany stair­
case was installed from the first floor to
the tower room. The dining room fire­
place received a new mahogany mantle
decorated with tiles depicting the Song
of Alfred.
Henri continued to take the train
into New York and manage his father’s
uptown restaurant. The French atmos­
phere and gaiety attracted realist
painters from the Ashcan School
including Robert Henri, John Sloan,
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