The rich are di;erent from you and me.
They have bigger houses. And some of
the richest people’s biggest houses can
be found on the banks of New York’s
Hudson River.
The Hudson Valley has the largest
concentration of nationally recognized Historic Places anywhere in the
United States. Since before there even
was a United States, the river has been
drawing the wealthiest artists, politicians and captains of industry to its
uncommonly beautiful shores to build
their “country cottages.” All the big
names are represented—Vanderbilt,
Roosevelt, Rockefeller—as are less-remembered titans. Some lived on
their estate full time, others only as a
temporary escape from New York City.
At least a dozen of these estates are now
public museums that give us a glimpse
of how the other half lived.
Perhaps
the best part
of Kykuit
is the artwork.
The Lower Valley
Three grand estates can be found in
Westchester County, minutes from Midtown Manhattan. Just hop on Route 9
heading north, and before you hit the
Tappan Zee Bridge you’ll find Sunnyside,
the home of writer Washington Irving.
As with all these homes, the first
thing you notice is the view. Here the
river widens into what the early Dutch
explorers named the Tappan Zee
(“Tappan Sea”), with the Catskills o; in
the distance, all spread gloriously before
Irving’s front door. The house itself is a
landmark of the romantic period Irving
loved. The stone structure, still covered
in dreamy wisteria planted by Irving
himself, has an eclectic mix of Dutch,
English, Spanish and Scottish influences.
The gardens are purposefully informal,
with winding paths surrounded by flowering trees and shrubs.
Inside, many of the family furnishings
remain in place. Tour guides are dressed
in elegant early 19th-century attire, giv-
ing you a sense of life at Sunnyside, which
Oliver Wendell Holmes called, “next to
Mount Vernon, the best known and most
cherished of all the dwellings in our land.”
Right next door—you can walk there
from Sunnyside on the lovely Croton
Aqueduct Trail—sits the imposing
Gothic-revival castle known as Lynd-
hurst. First occupied in 1842, it was
bought in 1880 by the robber baron Jay
Gould, who gave it its present name.
The 67 parklike acres surrounding Lyndhurst present more formal
19th-century landscaping, with wide,
rolling lawns, specimen trees and rose
gardens. But it’s the castle itself that
commands attention. The towers and
turrets seem ready to unleash volleys of
flaming arrows or cauldrons of boiling
oil on invading Huns. Inside, enormous
stained-glass windows illuminate the
