History of The Cutting Family Townhouses with Ms . Alexandra Cushing Howard
History of Our Home
History of The Cutting Family Townhouses with Ms . Alexandra Cushing Howard
In May 2024 , Ms . Howard connected with Strategic Communications Specialist Peter Martin to delve into her family ’ s history and the four townhouses that comprise our campus .
My mother Justine Bayard Cutting Cushing ( 1918-2003 ) grew up in the R . Fulton Cutting Jr . House at 15 E . 88th Street . In 1949 , with financial help from the Cutting family , my mother and father uprooted from New York and founded the Squaw Valley USA ski resort , which later hosted the VIII Winter Olympic Games in 1960 , and is now known as Palisades Tahoe . My sisters and I stayed with our grandparents , Fulton and Josy Cutting , at 15 East 88th Street ( 1955-1971 ), when we would visit from Squaw Valley , and later attended college at Sarah Lawrence . Education was always important to our family . ( I recall us often thinking that we had woken up in a museum because of the vast beauty of the space ). I can still hear the joyful sounds of the Saint David ’ s boys rampaging around the courtyard .
The Cuttings , through their female relations , the Bayards , had come to New Amsterdam with the last Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant ( 1610-1672 ), and had moved their residences as the city expanded northbound . Amazingly , their first houses were below the fortification that is now Wall Street . The family owed its fortune to William Bayard ( 1761-1826 ), who largely financed the Erie Canal , as well as to the inventor Robert Fulton ( 1765-1815 ) who developed the steamboat and the Fulton Ferry .
William Bayard
30
15 East 88th Street