 The rest of the farm was sold to a developer the next year, and subdivided into the commercial downtown it is now, completing the transformation of Chappaqua from the quiet country place to which Horace Greeley had escaped to practice farming into a modern suburb whose residents still lived in natural surroundings on large lots but commuted daily to jobs in the city.With the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s the house was neglected and fell into disrepair.By 1940 it was looking as if it might have to be demolished.