Name/Title
General Knox Headquarters (1940) Vails GateEntry/Object ID
001936Tags
John Ellison House, General Knox HeadquartersScope and Content
This is the John Ellison House, famously known as Knox's Headquarters State Historic Site in Vails Gate, New York.
The photo you have captures the home as it looked in 1936 during the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). While I initially mentioned a similar-looking house in Maryland, the New York history of this site is far more focused on military command and industrial trade.
Historical Uses of the Ellison House
The home served three primary roles throughout its history:
Military Headquarters (1779–1783): This is its most famous use. Major General Henry Knox, the Continental Army's chief of artillery, used this house as his headquarters on four separate occasions during the Revolutionary War. Because it was a sturdy, elegant stone house, it also hosted other high-ranking officials like General Nathanael Greene and Baron von Steuben.
Commercial Hub & Grist Mill: Before and after the war, the house was the center of the Ellison family’s business empire. They operated a large grist mill on the property (the ruins of which are still near the stream today). They were wealthy merchants who shipped flour down the Hudson River to New York City and even as far as the West Indies.
A "Telescope" Residence: Architecturally, the house was built in stages starting in 1754. As the Ellison family grew more prosperous, they added sections to the original house, resulting in the "stepped" look seen in your photo. This allowed the family to separate their private living quarters from their business offices.
The 1936 Documentation
In 1936, the house was a prime candidate for HABS photographers because it was one of the few surviving examples of high-style Georgian/Dutch fieldstone architecture in the Hudson Valley that hadn't been heavily "Victorianized" or altered.
Today, it is a New York State Historic Site where you can tour the rooms exactly where Knox and his staff planned artillery movements.
