Walter W. Law

Walter William Law (November 13, 1837 – January 17, 1924) was a businessman and the founder of the 8,000-person village of Briarcliff Manor, New York. He was a vice president of furniture and carpet retailer W. & J. Sloane, and later founded the Briarcliff Lodge, the Briarcliff Table Water Company, Briarcliff Farms, and the Briarcliff Greenhouses. He founded or assisted in establishing several schools, churches, and parks in the village, and rebuilt its train station in 1906. In the early 1900s, Walter Law was the largest individual landholder in Westchester County. Originally, Law mostly worked in retail, but with the Civil War, wholesale demands increased, and Law's time spent working in wholesale increased until he became devoted to it exclusively.

Law first came to Yonkers due to him marketing the products of the Alexander Smith & Sons Carpet Company in Yonkers for the manufacture of moquette carpets. Walter Law increased the business of Sloane's wholesale department by securing their account; he eventually became a stockholder and member of the Yonkers company's board of directors. Law and his wife moved to Hillcrest, at 354 Palisade Avenue in Yonkers, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,