After 70 Years, A Return Home to Purchase

With a young mind filled with 1940s patriotism and ambition, an 18-year-old Peter Day left his home on a Purchase farm in 1942 like so many others in his generation, to join the United States armed forces during World War II.

Leaving was no surprise, but as Day said goodbye to his family he would never have thought he wouldn't be back until 70 years later, in 2012, after the farmland around the home had transformed into the SUNY Purchase campus.

Day's memories of the home he shared with his mother, father and brother are a far cry from what exists there now. Dorms, administration buildings and a coffee house for students have replaced cattle fields that once extended as far as the eye can see. Day's father had worked for the wealthy Chisholm family, which owned the land at the time and lived in what is now the school's admissions building. Peter Day said his father worked long days as a butler for the Chisholm's, spending seven days a week working to support his family in the small cottage.

"He would go in every morning 6:30, quarter to seven, he would work until 10 at night," Day said. "He had a couple of hours off in the afternoon, otherwise he worked seven days a week."

Life on the farm offered isolation hard to imagine at a location now only a few minute's drive from busy highways and interstates. Chicken coups and farm equipment surrounded the small home, neighbors all worked on the farm for the Chisholm family. The farm was enormous, bigger that the current campus, and offered a buffer from the outside world. 

"It was out in the country, I'll tell you that," Day said, recalling the seven-mile bike ride his brother had to take to attend high school in Port Chester.

"I don't know if you know where Port Chester High School is," he said with a smile. "He would ride his bike all the way there for school."

Life on the farm became a thing of the past when Day enlisted in the Navy in 1942. While serving overseas his father passed away suddenly, forcing his mother to sell the property and move out of Purchase. Seven decades later, tears still well up in his eyes as Day described the sale of the home while he was gone.

When Day returned to Westchester after the war he became a White Plains Police officer, bought a home in Greenburgh and started his own family. Very quickly, Day's ties to the farm were essentially severed.

Dramatic change was on the way for Purchase as well. The Chisholm family sold the farm in 1961 to a group of Purchase residents for $2.1 million. Five years later the land was sold again, this time to New York State for the purpose of creating SUNY Purchase.

Although the sale changed the surrounding landscape, Day's childhood home was spared and kept. The school's original vice president lived in the home in the late '60s, and the cottage served as the school's library at one point.

But in 1977, as the campus continued to develop, the home was left vacant and has remained so since.

During those years Day said he has driven by his childhood home from time to time, peeking at it from the outside. But this was the first time he was able to walk inside. His son-in-law, who works on the campus, set up the visit this week.

Although the home still stands, the years of vacancy have had an effect. Cracks have taken to the walls and there is water damage on many of the floors. But Day said he still recognizes the layout of the place he once called home. With the exception of a few new walls upstairs and some changes to the outside, things are pretty much the same, Day said.

"It was interesting to see, it really was," Day said after the 20-minute walkthrough. "I enjoyed it."

Despite years of vacancy, the college does have plans for the home. With a little work, the building could be turned into faculty housing at some point. New roofing and windows have already been installed, and more fixes are possible in the near future.

It won't be the same country living offered so many years ago, but the quant cottage-style house now in the middle of a college campus could be a place someone calls home again sometime soon.