Charles H. Tenney was the proprietor of C. H. Tenney & Co., established in 1868, and became one of the most successful commissioned merchants and hat dealers in the world. He was also a director of the Bank of the Manhattan Company and life trustee of the Bowery Savings Bank.

Born Charles Henry, in Salem, New Hampshire, he was the youngest of four sons of John Ferguson Tenney, a well-to-do farmer, and Hannah Woodbury. He married Fannie H. Gleason on November 23, 1865, and they had two children: a son, Daniel Gleason, and a daughter, Adelaide, who died as an infant. His grandson and namesake Charles Henry Tenney was from 1955 to 1964 Commissioner, Corporate Counsel, City Administrator, and Deputy Mayor of New York City and nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

C. H. Tenney was educated at the New Hampshire Conference Seminary in Tilton. In his youth, he helped tend his family farm and was a clerk in a general store. The family later moved to Methuen, Massachusetts, where his father opened a grocery and hardware store on Hampshire Street. His two older brothers, Daniel and George Washington, established Tenney & Co. shoe manufacturers and were Methuen civic leaders. Charles and his brother John Milton established the hat manufacturing enterprise, in which Charles sold his interest to J. Milton in 1883.

In 1868, C. H. Tenney opened offices in New York and established himself as a wholesale commission agent, handling a very large part of the hat production in the United States, and selling more than any similar concern in the world. He would live principally in New York and have offices headquartered at Washington Place and West 4th Street. His hat business was located at 610-618 Broadway, with more than three acres of floor space. He was a member of the Union League Club of New York, the Metropolitan Club, New York Yacht Club, Sleepy Hollow Club, New York Athletic Club, New York Chamber of Commerce, and New England Society of New York. He was also a sustaining member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History.

Although his principal residence was at 570 Park Avenue, he died in his apartment at New York's Plaza Hotel. Memorial or funeral services honoring Tenney were held in New York City, Salem, and Methuen, at Greycourt. Interment, alongside his wife who died December 15, 1905, was in the Tenney Mausoleum at the Walnut Grove Cemetery in Methuen. The Tenney Memorial Chapel, designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury, and located within the Walnut Grove Cemetery was dedicated (in 1927) by Daniel Gleason Tenney in memory of his parents. C. H. Tenney's estate was valued at approximately $5 million ($77M in today's dollar), and he left $1 million to his son ($15.3M in today's dollar) and $250,000 ($4M in today's dollar) to each grandchild. He had always been a generous benefactor to Methuen. He dedicated the Hannah Tenney United Methodist Church in Salem Center to honor his mother. His will designated a quarter of a million dollars to a collection of churches, hospitals, and schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Grey Court
Grey Court (aka Tenney Castle) designed by prominent New York architects, Carrère and Hastings, was the centerpiece of Charles Tenney's 75-acre rolling estate, Fair View Park. Begun in 1890 and completed two years later, the mansion was modeled after Château d'Yquem, the ancestral seat of Montaigne, and served as the Tenney family's summer home. Ernest W. Bowditch designed the grounds. He had laid out several estates in Newport, Rhode Island, including Marble House, W. K. Vanderbilt's estate; designed Tuxedo Park in New York; and landscaped Colgate University. His designs for Greycourt's surrounds won a prestigious horticultural prize in 1902.

 

The mansion and estate were offered to the town of Methuen by Charles H. Tenney's son, Daniel Gleason Tenney. The town voted to reject the generous gift and tragically, Daniel Tenney died unexpectedly while the gift of the castle was being negotiated. The town accepted 26 acres for the construction of Tenney High School (now Tenney Grammar School). The mansion and grounds were sold to the Basilian Salvatorian Order.  Greycourt was later used as a drug rehabilitation center. Left abandoned, it was set on fire by an arsonist in 1977. The impressive stone and terracotta castle remains were then almost completely destroyed by a demolition company in 1985. A very small section of one of the towers is all that remains of the magnificent historic castle.

Tenney Gatehouse
Now home to the Methuen Historical Society and Museum and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Tenney Gatehouse was originally a rough stone farmhouse built by Richard Whittier in 1830. Tenney purchased it in 1882 and remodeled to become the entry point to Greycourt. Today it is one of the few remaining structures on the estate. The building you see today is the result of a seven-year community effort to restore the abandoned building that was on the verge of collapse.

C.H. Tenney was very generous to Methuen during his life. On July 24, 1888, the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial on Charles Street in Methuen, created by sculptor Thomas Ball and honoring, among others, those who had served in the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, was unveiled. The monument was a gift to Methuen from Charles H. Tenney.