¡Shadowcliff, Presente!
By Meredith Krashes Nicolich
You may have heard that the former headquarters of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the mansion called Shadowcliff on North Broadway in Nyack, NY, was demolished in the last few weeks. And you may now be wondering: why? We have started to hear this question here at our current office in Stony Point, along with regret, from longtime members and staff who have happy memories of spending time at Shadowcliff.
FOR-USA sold the property in 2018, after a reduction in staff and need for less space. The house went through a few different owners, when the current property owner was given permission by the Village of Upper Nyack Board of Trustees in 2025 to tear the building down, after finding that the building was almost impossible to renovate.
One of the conditions for allowing this demolition was to put up a plaque commemorating the FOR connection to the property. FOR has written and submitted a draft of this plaque, which the Village will use as a suggestion to their historian’s work on crafting it. Here is our suggestion:
On this site stood Shadowcliff, the 16,000 square foot mansion built in 1921 by Mrs. Eleanor Manville Ford, whose family owned the property until her death in 1949. In 1957, Shadowcliff became the headquarters for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR-USA). FOR is the oldest interfaith peace organization in the world, having been founded in Europe in 1914 and in the United States in 1915. Prior to moving its headquarters to Shadowcliff, the FOR national office was in New York City. Staff members of FOR worked at Shadowcliff until its national office was relocated to the Stony Point Center in 2018.
FOR-USA’s mission is to organize, train, and grow a diverse movement of people of conscience committed to using the transformative power of nonviolence to create peace, end structures of violence and war, and build the Beloved Community. FOR-USA has carried out programs and educational projects concerned with domestic and international peace and justice, nonviolent alternatives to conflict, and the rights of conscience. FOR-USA promotes active nonviolence and has members across the U.S. from many religious, spiritual, and ethnic traditions. Six Nobel Peace Prize Laureates were members, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jane Addams. FOR-USA is a branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, with affiliates in over 50 countries. (FORUSA.ORG)
