Inside New York’s spookiest 19th century mansion, dubbed “the house of many mysteries” before it was abandoned

Empty and showing its age, it might be the creepiest house ever photographed in New York. For roughly 50 years, this fortress of a mansion was the lone occupant of a thickly wooded island off the Bronx’s Oak Point, now known as Hunts Point, where the East River intersects with Long Island Sound. With more than 100 rooms, five stories, and a double-pitched mansard roof, the unsettling house had none of the elegance of the other estate homes owned by elite families that dotted the bucolic landscape of today’s South Bronx in the middle of the 19th century. Its imposing size and remoteness gave it an air of mystery after it was completed in 1859. For the next several decades, stories circulated about secret staircases and chambers (fifth image), escape tunnels leading into the woods and the waterfront, and ghostly rumblings. Adding to the intrigue were the two wealthy men who owned the house at different times. One was a pro-slavery merchant, the other a Spanish nobleman who played a key…