Dey Mansion: Washington's New Jersey War Room

In the summer and fall of seventeen eighty, George Washington made a gracious Georgian manor in what is now Wayne, New Jersey the nerve center of the Continental Army. The house belonged to Colonel Theunis Dey, a New Jersey militia officer and committed patriot who had inherited the property from his father Richard Dey, who built the main structure in the eighteenth century. Its brick walls, wide center hall, and symmetrical windows were every inch the kind of Georgian dignity a commander-in-chief needed when receiving dispatches and entertaining officers.

Washington headquartered here in two stretches totaling roughly three months: first in July of seventeen eighty, then again from October into November. While he worked inside the mansion, thousands of Continental Army troops were encamped across the surrounding countryside, spread through what are now the towns of Totowa, Woodland Park, Little Falls, and Hawthorne. At any given moment the Dey estate was the hub of an enormous military operation.

The location mattered strategically. The British held New York City, just twenty miles to the east, and Washington needed a position from which he could monitor their movements without exposing his forces to a surprise attack. The Passaic River valley offered both cover and mobility.

One of the most consequential episodes of the entire war played out while Washington was headquartered here. In late September seventeen eighty, he learned that Major John Andre had been captured carrying secret correspondence with Benedict Arnold, revealing Arnold's plan to surrender West Point to the British. Washington ordered Arnold's arrest, but Arnold escaped to a British ship on the Hudson. Andre was tried and hanged. Washington returned to the Dey Mansion in October with the betrayal still fresh.

The house still stands and is now a museum, its rooms arranged much as they would have appeared during those three tense months in seventeen eighty.