Harold Doley, Jr.

Tim Hays, who is also chair of the Greenburgh Ethics Board, recently interviewed Harold Doley, Jr., a resident of Hartsdale, who purchased and revived the Madame Walker estate in Irvington. Ambassador Doley also was the first and only African American to purchase a seat on the NY Stock Exchange. 

How Ambassador Harold E. Doley, Jr. revived a National Treasure:  The Madam C. J. Walker Estate in Irvington

Harold E. Doley realized at an early age that he wanted to make his mark in the world of finance. Growing up in his parents’ New Orleans grocery store provided an early education in business. Graduating from Xavier University with a B.A. in Accounting and moving to New York, Doley was trained by Bache Securities to be a stockbroker. Five years later, in 1973, Doley became the first (and only) African American individual to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. (NYSE discontinued individual memberships in 1999.)

Doley’s eponymous securities firm had offices both in Manhattan and back in New Orleans. In the mid-1970s, Harold and his wife, Helena, looked at homes in different parts of Westchester County, settling in Scarsdale. But the Doleys had seen their dream house, the one home in which they really wanted to live, and it was in Irvington. 

Madam C. J. Walker was the first female millionaire in America, establishing her fortune from a hair products business she began in Indianapolis in 1910. By 1917, she had moved to New York, joining her daughter, Lelia, who lived in Harlem and ran her mother’s eastern business operations. The following year, Madam Walker bought a large property on North Broadway in Irvington and commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first licensed Black architect in New York, to build a home worthy of her millionaire status. Madam decided on the location as it was on Albany Post Road, and she wanted politicians and others traveling from New York City to the state’s capital to see how a self-made Black millionaire woman lived. 

Madam Walker had become friends with Enrico Caruso, and it was the dashing world-famous opera singer’s idea to name Madam Walker’s home. Villa Lewaro was formed from the first two letters of the name of Madam Walker’s daughter, Lelia Walker Robinson. 

When Harold and Helena Doley first inspected Madam Walker’s home in the 1990s, it had fallen into disrepair. The Doleys made an offer for the estate, and shortly after their 1993 purchase, they began a major renovation of the Villa, preserving its Italianate style. Two decades later, with Harold Doley’s persistence, the Walker estate, already a National Historic Landmark, began a journey to becoming a museum with the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. When the Doleys decided to sell Villa Lewaro in 2018, they attached an easement to the deed, funded in perpetuity by the Doley Foundation, that states the property must be maintained in the manner of the estate as of the date it was sold. 

_Written by Tim Hays