Fayetteville home of Grover Cleveland up for sale

VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – The boyhood home of Grover Cleveland, the only United States president ever elected to two non-consecutive terms, has been put up for sale.
Located at 109 Academy St. in Fayetteville, the 1,576-square-foot, single-family residence most recently belonged to Nancy Needham, who lived there for the last 27 years.
A native Syracusan, Needham went away to Massachusetts for college and taught history in Boston prior to an extended stay in Washington D.C. from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s.
Drawn back to her hometown due to the fact that her aging mother still lived here, she caught sight of the listing for the house in a 1995 Syracuse Herald American ad and decided it was just the place to spend her retirement years.
“I figured it would be fun to live in a house that had a brass plaque on the front,” Needham said. At the time, she didn’t know an “awful lot” about Grover Cleveland, she admits, but she had the impression that he was a “good-government” Democrat who was “progressive policy-wise.”
Born in 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey, Cleveland lived in the Fayetteville house from the ages of four to about 13. The Colonial structure was specially constructed in 1841 for his father, Richard, who was called upon to be a Presbyterian minister in the village.
Before his family moved to Clinton and later Holland Patent, Cleveland attended Fayetteville Academy right across the road from his home. In his teenage years, he returned to the village to work as a clerk at McViccar’s dry goods store, which stood in what is now Limestone Plaza.
He would go on to become Erie County’s sheriff, the mayor of Buffalo, the governor of New York, and the 22nd and 24th president.
Needham, 83, said the decision to move from the west side of Academy Street to an apartment at The Nottingham in Jamesville owes to a growing inability to take care of the nearly half-acre property and a need to shrink her surroundings.
“It was pretty obvious I had to live somewhere else and not have to drive or get out all the time and shop,” she said.
At one time a member of the Town of Manlius and Village of Fayetteville tree commissions, Needham said she will miss her “great neighbors,” many of whom she came to know because of their curiosity in relation to the house.
“Nancy’s been a great steward of that home,” said Mayor Mark Olson, who happened to have resided in the very same house as a newborn. “I just hope whoever buys it realizes the history of it, realizes how important it is to Fayetteville and continues that tradition of taking care of something that’s a jewel in our community.”
Over the decades, the house’s kitchen was redone and its bathroom was retrofitted. It has also been known for eccentricities and oddities like its above-ground cellar and the front door that requires extra shoulder strength to close.
At press time, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house was listed at $295,000.
To request a tour, contact Patricia Humpleby of DeWitt Real Estate at 315-446-2444.