The Dyckman family sold the prosperous farm in 1868 and moved to a more fashionable mansion on Broadway. In 1915, two sisters, Mary Alice D. Dean and Fannie Fredericka D. Welsh, descendants of William Dyckman, bought back the family house and began extensive reconstructionone of the earliest historic restorations undertaken in New York. They presented it to the City in 1916 with 18th- and 19th-century furniture and objects that were representative of their family’s belongings.