In 1875 the veneer mill burned and Copcutt moved his business to New York, renting the rebuilt mill to the “Eagle” Pencil Company for a factory. A few years later Copcutt again found himself in opposition to the city. By the 1880’s the Nepperhan had become, according to local authorities, a “seething nuisance“ of polluted water which, it was feared, might breed cholera and other diseases. Dr. Valentine Brown in 1892 urged the health department to remove Copcutt’s remaining dams at the fifth and sixth water–powers to prevent a cholera epidemic. When the dams were ordered down, Copcutt refused and brought suit in the courts. To prevent him from obtaining an injunction, the citizens organized and one night in December tore the dams down releasing the waters. The incident received much press and The Yonkers Statesman of the next day read: “Dams Down! Three Nuisances Removed, A Great Night’s Work.” Copcutt is reported to have pursued the issue for the next three years, until his death in 1895.⁵

A year after Copcutt’s death, the Reverend Charles Allison would write that he (Copcutt):

delighted in travel and was a great reader. His memory was most remarkable and his reminiscences, extending from his earliest childhood, were most interesting. Mr. Copcutt ascribed his health and activity to the fact that he had always been in active employment. He was a strong free trader and, although at one time largely engaged in silk manufacturing himself, always advocated his views with vigor. In politics he took little active part, but at one time served as village trustee but declined further office holding. In commercial circles Mr. Copcutt’s integrity and financial standing were of the highest; he passed through several financial crisis, but always paid his obligations in full. In religion he was a strong Calvinist, and never severed his relations from them in England, and until the time of his death contributed largely to their support.⁶

The house built by John Copcutt is all that remains of this early industrialist. Executed in the Italianate style popularized in the mid–nineteenth century by Alexander Jackson Downing’s Cottage Residences (1842) and The Architecture of Country Houses (1850) it features all of the hallmarks of the style; i.e., a well-defined rectilinear block crowned by a slightly pitched roof supported at the eaves by brackets, smooth and uniform wall surfaces accented by rustication, and round–arched windows employing pedimented hoods. The centrally–placed tower, which has been altered by the removal of its top storey, distinguishes the building as a villa. Drawing from Renaissance practice, floor heights diminish at upper stories, and stories are articulated by horizontal string courses.

The interior of the house retains the richly ornamented decorative devices favored by the period. Robust and richly carved balusters accent the semi–elliptical staircase and central hall light–well while finely executed mantles employ the plastic detailing associated with the style. Plaster moldings, often floral in motif, highlight the house’s main rooms.

Although the house derives its prime importance as one of the two finest Italianate dwellings remaining in Yonkers (together with the Ethan Flagg house—now the Convent of the Blessed Sacrement) and through its association with John Copcutt, it achieves a secondary significance through its association with Dr. Charles Leale; Leale, who married Copcutt’s daughter in the house, was the first surgeon to reach the assasinated President Lincoln in Fords’ Theater the night of April 4, 1865, and was directed by Mrs. Lincoln to take charge of her fatally wounded husband. Attending to the president until his death the next day, he was assigned a place of honor at the funeral procession—riding in a carriage immediately preceeding the presidential catafalgue.⁷