"The Larches" was the Whitehouse Family home in Irvington.
James Henry Whitehouse, Dean of the New York Stock Exchange, of which he had been a member more than sixty-six years, died yesterday at the age of 90 at his home, The Larches, Irvington-on-Hudson. His death was due to an attack of heart disease that terminated an illness which had confined him to the house since last Summer. There are three surviving children, J. Norman de R. Whitehouse of 118 East Fifty-sixth Street, H. Remsen Whitehouse of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Beatrice Perdonnet, wife of Colonel Frank B. Perdonnet of the British Army. Services will be held Wednesday morning in St. Barnabas Church at Irvington.
The twentieth of last November was the sixty-sixth anniversary of Mr. Whitehouse's joining the Stock Exchange, and the occasion brought a flood of congratulatory messages to his bedside at Irvington from men prominent in the financial life of the city. This oldest member's seat on the Exchange cost $100, and in later years Mr. Whitehouse was fond of noting that the price had risen one thousand-fold. Recently, however, this statement would not have been exact, for seats were sold on May 1 for $84,000, but the statement was true a few years ago.
Not only was Mr. Whitehouse the oldest member of the Exchange, but the firm of which he was a special partner, Whitehouse & Co., 111 Broadway, is the oldest brokerage house in Wall Street. It traces directly to Camman & Whitehouse, founded in 1828. In 1857 it became Whitehouse, Son & Morrison and was one of the few houses to survive the panic of that year as it did every panic since then. This firm was succeeded by the present Whitehouse & Co.
In November, 1908, Mr. Whitehouse became the Dean of the Stock Exchange, by virtue of the retirement of William Alexander Smith, who had entered the board in 1844. But before then many brokers had looked on Mr. Whitehouse as the true dean because of his remarkable activity on the board, his years, until last Summer, seeming to have no effect on his energies, his acuteness, or even, to any great extent, on his appearance.
Mr. Whitehouse was descended from an old English family that contained many clergymen of the Church of England. His first American ancestor was James Whitehouse, who came to New York in 1788, one of whose sons was the famous Bishop Whitehouse of Illinois, at one time rector of St. Thomas's Church in this city. The Bishop's younger brother Edward was the father of James H. Whitehouse. The latter's wife, who was Mary Schenck, is no longer living. Norman de R. Whitehouse is the husband of Vira Boarman Whitehouse, noted for her beauty and her interest in suffrage and other civic affairs. (NY Times, May 12, 1924).