NYC-area estate of 1st US self-made female millionaire sold

IRVINGTON, N.Y. (AP) -- The New York estate built a century ago by a daughter of slaves who made her fortune selling hair care products for black women has been purchased by an organization founded by the owner of Essence magazine.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced Thursday that Madam C.J. Walker's century-old Italianate villa-style mansion in New York City's northern suburbs was recently bought by the New Voices Foundation, started by Richelieu Dennis, founder of a skin and hair care products company. A purchase price wasn't released.

Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Louisiana in 1867 to former slaves. After marrying St. Louis newspaperman Charles Joseph Walker, she changed her name to Madam C.J. Walker and began selling her own hair care and beauty products made for black women, a venture that made her wealthy as her name became known across the U.S., Central America and the Caribbean.

Walker is considered the first self-made female millionaire in the United States.

She followed her daughter, Lelia Walker Robinson, to Harlem in 1916. Two years later Walker built Villa Lewaro in Irvington, on the Hudson River in Westchester County. By the time she died of a kidney ailment there in 1919, her 34-room mansion had become a gathering place for leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes.

Dennis, a Liberian immigrant, started Sundial brands in 1992 with his mother, making products based on African healing traditions passed down by his grandmother. He acquired the Walker brand in 2013 and relaunched it in 2016 as Sephora, and purchased Essence from Time Inc. earlier this year.

Dennis' New Voices Foundation, an organization that aids women of color entrepreneurs, will renovate and operate the former Walker estate, he said.

"It is a place where — against all odds — dreams were formed, visions were realized and entrepreneurs were born, and we look forward to returning its use to support that mission," Dennis said in a statement.

Dennis' foundation bought the property in mid-September.

Villa Lewaro's name was taken from the first two letters of each word in Walker's daughter's name. The home was designed by Vertner Woodson Tandy, the first licensed black architect in New York state. Built on the heights overlooking the Hudson's east bank, the mansion stood out even in an area dotted with estates owned by such wealthy whites as the Rockefellers.

Walker's daughter, who changed her name to A'Lelia, left the estate to the NAACP after she died 1931. The organization, struggling financially during the early years of the Great Depression, sold the property immediately after acquiring it. It had several owners over the next few decades before investment banker Harold E. Doley Jr. and his wife, Helena, bought the property in 1993.

The home was named a National Treasure by the Washington, D.C.-based National Trust in 2014. It's now among a growing number of historically black properties being protected as part of the organization's Cultural Heritage Action Fund, started last year to help ensure historical sites important to African-American history are no longer endangered.

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This story has been corrected to fix estate ownership to organization founded by magazine owner instead of magazine owner and his family.