Begun in 1920 and finished by 1928, the work of a Pittsburgh businessman named Selden. A stone-and-timber retreat, a sunken garden, and a hundred years of children running between the swans and the lake.
In the years after the First World War a Pittsburgh businessman named James M. Selden and his wife Florence began building a summer home on a wooded promontory along the eastern shore of Chautauqua Lake. The house was finished by about 1921. The grounds — formal gardens, a long pergola, a reflecting pool, a swan pond fed by a rocky cascade — followed in the years after, and by the early 1930s the estate was famous enough that the Bemus Point linen postcards simply called it "Beautiful Estate at Bemus Point on Chautauqua Lake, N.Y."
It went by other names too: The Villa. Villa du Lac. Eventually just The Woods. A short walk away, at the ferry crossing, Selden also built the Bemus Point Village Casino — a dance hall and bathhouse that opened in 1930 and, in the decade after, hosted Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. The estate at Lincoln Road was its private counterpart: the quiet side of the same era.
What follows is a record of the place — what was built, who came after, and what remains.
Construction begins. The blueprints — titled "Residence for Mr. J.M. Selden, Bemus Point, New York" — are drawn by Beck & Tinkham, Architects R.A. of the Gailey Building, Jamestown, N.Y., signed by W.M. Andreasen. The work would take most of the decade.
The Bemus Point Allotment is platted. A 1923 subdivision map filed at the Chautauqua County Clerk's office establishes the parcels around the estate.
The estate is finished. A metal date plate set into the floor of the carriage house reads 1928 — the most reliable surviving record of when the buildings were completed. By the early 1930s the gardens are mature enough to appear on the Bemus Point linen postcards.
Selden builds the Bemus Point Village Casino at the ferry crossing — a bathhouse below, ballroom and bowling alleys above. Through the next decade it hosts Dorsey, Goodman, Basie, Ellington, Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Sammy Kaye, Buddy Rich and Sinatra.
Surveyor C. Eugene Bentley produces the definitive estate map "for James M. Selden and Florence L. Selden" — recording the grounds, the gardens, the pergola, the pump house, the bath house, and the lakefront. A handwritten caption in the same year's family album reads simply: The Woods — Bemus Point New York — Lake Chautauqua, 1931.
Florence Selden conveys the entire estate to the Diocese of Buffalo by warranty deed for "$1.00 and more." Recorded in Liber 689 of Deeds, p. 406. James had died; Florence's address on the deed is 10 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City.
The Diocese operates the property as Notre Dame du Lac Retreat House. In 1957 it serves as a summer house of studies for 123 seminarians and seven faculty.
The Diocese conveys the estate to Gene DeMambro of Mayville, who transfers it that same October to G.L.R. Development Corporation. Over the following two years G.L.R. sells off four lakefront parcels — the right-hand pair to two separate buyers, the left-hand pair eventually combined into one. Every deed preserves, by covenant, "the stone pump house and dock at the foot of Lincoln Street" for the benefit of the inland owners.
The estate passes through subsequent owners and is consolidated under the present stewardship. The main house, the carriage house, the gates, the gardens and the lakefront pump house remain. The original cottage at the lakefront, the bath house and one of the gazebos do not.
A two-and-a-half-story Tudor of cut limestone, stucco-and-half-timber gables, leaded casements and a steep cedar-shingle roof, with an arched porte-cochère and a screened lakeside porch. Diocese era: Notre Dame du Lac Retreat House. Private today.
A three-bay stone-and-brick garage with a steeply pitched shingle roof and dormers, built to hold three motorcars. A metal floor plate inside is stamped with the year 1928 — the most reliable surviving date for the estate's completion. Mr. Selden himself stands in front of it in a 1925 family photograph. Currently in restoration.
A small green-clapboard cottage with a steeply pitched gable, scrolled bargeboard, and X-braced porch railings, set near Lincoln Road behind the pump house. Part of the original Selden estate and named for the rose gardens that once stood around it. Privately owned today — not part of our portfolio — but a beloved fixture of the property's story.
A newly built one-bedroom cottage just down the lane at 79 Lincoln Road, professionally designed and walkable to Bemus Point village. The way to spend a week within sight of the gardens and the lake.
The garden plan reads cleanly even after a century. A long axial walk descends from the house through paired stone piers into a sunken parterre. At its centre is a rectangular reflecting pool, set in a parterre lined with clipped boxwood and tulip beds, with Italian cypresses at the corners. A tall brick wall closes the composition behind.
To one side: a long timber-and-honeycomb-lattice pergola, terminated at each end with a carved stone urn on a plinth. Between the formal garden and the lake, an irregular pond fed by a rocky cascade, crossed by a rustic iron foot-bridge and stocked with mute swans — the view that made the early postcards.
Most of it is still here: the reflecting pool, the stone gates, the carriage-lamp piers, the brick wall, the pergola's stonework. The bath house, the open gazebo, the mill wheel and the swans are gone. A tennis court was added above the reflecting pool sometime later.
A century apart, the same gates and gardens.
The estate itself is private. The newly built Cottage at The Woods, just down Lincoln Road, is the way to stay close to it — with access to the estate's lakefront dock and gazebo on Chautauqua Lake.
See the CottageThis page draws on a 2018 album compiled by the Bemus Point Historical Society from photographs contributed by former residents Denny Vant and Dave McGraw, with additional images later contributed by local architect Philip Thorsell. Dates and ownership transfers are from the 2025 title abstract prepared by Chautauqua Abstract Company, search No. 706823A. The architect attribution comes from the original blueprints, titled "Residence for Mr. J.M. Selden, Bemus Point — New York" and signed "Beck & Tinkham, Architects R.A., 30 Gailey Building, Jamestown, New York." The Casino history draws from the Post-Journal, The Villager, and bemuspointcasino.com. The names of the bath house, pergola and open gazebo come from the 1931 Bentley survey held in the title abstract; their precise location on the grounds is approximate.
Corrections and additions are welcome. Please write info@irwinbaycottages.com.
