Warwick prepares to celebrate 300 years of the Wisner family

WARWICK — Village Historian Jean Beattie May has set up a new exhibit of photographs in the lobby of the Village Hall recognizing Clinton Wheeler Wisner (1856-1904) who served three terms as mayor (then called president) of the village from 1890 until his death in 1904.

The exhibit is part of the tercentennial of the Wisner family in Warwick.

Wisner was a direct descendant of Johannes Weesner, one of Warwick’s first settlers, a former Swiss soldier who had served Queen Anne in the war against Louis XIV of France (1702-1713) and who came to Warwick in 1713 and settled near Mt. Eve on land granted to him by one of the members of the Wawayanda Patent.

Several generations later, Clinton Wheeler Wisner’s impact on the village is still seen today with the number of buildings he designed which are shown in the exhibit.

As executor of the estate of a wealthy Pennsylvania banker, Wisner was able to indulge his passion for architecture combining it with his love of Warwick where he had spent his early years as well as his later years.

Architectural legacy
Wisner’s influence as a designer is evident: From his own house on Oakland Avenue, The Anchorage, and its neighbor Dulce Domum to the Excelsior Hose Company No. I building on High Street, from the English cottages on Clinton Avenue and Linden Place, the Red Swan Inn (demolished in the 1950’s), to the Warwick Reformed Church, the Warwick Railroad Station and the cemetery gates.

“Growing up in Warwick, being surrounded by the extraordinary architectural legacy of Clinton Wisner has been a personal inspiration,” Mayor Michael Newhard said in the press release announcing the exhibit. “Clinton Wisner embodied the ideals of American ingenuity at a time when the Village of Warwick was coming into its own. The turn of the century was a heady time when anything seemed possible and Mayor Wisner’s talent and vision went hand in hand with the community’s evolution.”

The Warwick Historical Society will present the first program about the Wisner family on Saturday, Feb. 23, at 4 p.m., at the A.W. Buckbee Center.