Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site | |
Location | Hyde Park, New York |
---|---|
Coordinates | 41°47′46″N73°56′31″W / 41.79611°N 73.94194°W |
Area | 211 acres (85 ha) |
Built | 1896–99 |
Architect | McKim, Mead & White, Robert H. Robertson |
Architectural style | Beaux-Arts |
Visitation | 372,517 (2005) |
Website | Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site |
NRHP reference No. | 66000059 [1] |
NYSRHP No. | 02707.000015 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
Designated HD | October 15, 1966 [1] |
Designated NHS | December 18, 1940 [2] |
Designated NYSRHP | June 23, 1980 |
Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site is a historic house museum in Hyde Park, New York, United States. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1940, it is owned and operated by the National Park Service.
The property, historically known as Hyde Park, was one of several homes owned by Frederick William Vanderbilt and his wife Louise Holmes Anthony. The 54-room Vanderbilt mansion was designed by the preeminent architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. Construction occurred between 1896 and 1899. The house is an example of the Beaux-Arts architecture style. The interiors are archetypes of the American Renaissance, blending European architectural salvage, antiques, and fine period reproductions representing an array of historical styles. The site includes 211 acres (85 ha) of the original larger property (once around 600 acres) situated on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and includes manicured lawns, formal gardens, woodlands, and numerous auxiliary buildings.
Historically known as Hyde Park, the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site is one of the area's oldest Hudson River estates. [3] The earliest development of the estate began in 1764 when Dr. John Bard purchased land on the east side of the Albany Post Road, where he built Red House and developed the agricultural aspects of the eastern section of the property that continued through Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt's occupancy. Bard family ownership continued through 1821 with his son, Dr. Samuel Bard (1742–1821), owning the property from 1799 to 1821. In 1828, Dr. David Hosack, president of the New York Horticultural Society, purchased the property from Samuel Bard's heirs, with André Parmentier helping to design the grounds. In 1840, John Jacob Astor purchased the property from Hosack's heirs for his daughter Dorothea and her husband Walter S. Langdon. Their son Walter inherited and occupied the estate to the time of his death in 1894. [4]
Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt purchased Hyde Park in May 1895 from Langdon's heirs. Attracted to the Hudson Valley and the land on the east bank of the Hudson River, Frederick and his wife settled into their 600-acre (240 ha) estate. The location offered quick and easy access to New York City on the Vanderbilt's own New York Central Railroad. The house was designed and built between 1896 and 1899, and was primarily used as a vacation home for Frederick Vanderbilt's family. The previous owners of the estate had made it well known for its grand landscape and array of different plants and trees throughout the property. The New York Times described the Vanderbilt's estate as "the finest place on the Hudson between New York and Albany."
Their niece, Margaret "Daisy" Van Alen, inherited the property when Frederick Vanderbilt died in 1938. Encouraged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who owned an estate nearby), Van Alen donated a portion of the estate, including the residence with most of its original furnishings, to the National Park Service in 1940. [2] From 1941 to 1943, Roosevelt's Secret Service was housed in the basement and third-floor service areas, and some of the President's personal White House staff and friends occasionally stayed in the main bedrooms of the house, including those of Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt.
The 54-room mansion is the work of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. [3] Charles Follen McKim designed the plan in the Beaux-Arts style and Stanford White assisted as an antiques buyer.
The house has a classic Beaux-Arts plan, with the major public rooms on its ground floor – the central Elliptical Hall, Dining Room, and Living Room – all in one line, parallel to the Hudson River. North and South Foyers provide transitional space from the Hall to the Dining Room and Living Room. Five secondary spaces are located off the Elliptical Hall: the Lobby, Den, Gold Room, Grand Stair Hall, and Lavatory. The second floor rooms, comprising Mrs. Vanderbilt's suite of Bedroom, Boudoir and Bathroom (designed by Ogden Codman), Mr. Vanderbilt's Bedroom and Bathroom, Guest Bedrooms and Baths and the Linen Room, are disposed around the Second Floor Hall and the North and South Foyers. The third floor contains five additional guest bedrooms, and a Servants' Hall separated from the guests' rooms by a door at the main staircase. Supported by both concrete and steel, the Vanderbilt mansion was considered modern for its time. The mansion also included plumbing and forced hot air central heating and electric lighting which was powered by a hydroelectric plant built on the estate on the Crum Elbow stream. The Vanderbilt estate had electric lighting before the surrounding area.
Herter Brothers and A. H. Davenport and Company were subcontractors who executed McKim's interior designs. The Vanderbilts also hired Georges Glaenzer and Ogden Codman to decorate several rooms. E.F. Caldwell & Co. manufactured the majority of the lighting.
When the Vanderbilts decided to replace cowbarns that dotted their extensive property, the couple chose Robert H. Robertson, a prominent architect who also designed Shelburne Farms, home of Frederick Vanderbilt's sister, Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb. [5] Robertson's coach house, completed in the Queen Anne style, is in vast contrast to stoic mansion.
The Italian gardens are detached from the house and incorporated formal elements typical of the Italian style. This meant that the beds were arranged in such a way that if you drew a line across the middle, either horizontally or vertically, one side of the line would mirror the other side. These formal gardens also consisted of multiple tiers, which depended on the type of plants. Each level was different. Frederick himself added the rose garden which contained almost 2000 vintage rose bushes along with other kinds of roses. [6]
Hyde Park is a town in Dutchess County, New York, United States, bordering the Hudson River north of Poughkeepsie. Within the town are the hamlets of Hyde Park, East Park, Staatsburg, and Haviland. Hyde Park is known as the hometown of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States.
From the late 1870s to the 1920s, the Vanderbilt family employed some of the best Beaux-Arts architects and decorators in the United States to build a notable string of townhouses in New York City and palaces on the East Coast of the United States. Many of the Vanderbilt houses are now National Historic Landmarks. Some photographs of Vanderbilt residences in New York are included in the Photographic series of American Architecture by Albert Levy (1870s).
Frederick William Vanderbilt was a member of the American Vanderbilt family. He was a director of the New York Central Railroad for 61 years, and also a director of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad and of the Chicago and North Western Railroad.
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Kykuit, known also as the John D. Rockefeller Estate, is a 40-room historic house museum in Pocantico Hills, a hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant, New York 25 miles (40 km) north of New York City. The house was built for oil tycoon and Rockefeller family patriarch John D. Rockefeller. Conceived largely by his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and enriched by the art collection of the third-generation scion, Governor of New York, and Vice President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, it was home to four generations of the family. The house is a National Historic Landmark owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and tours are given by Historic Hudson Valley.
Rosecliff is a Gilded Age mansion of Newport, Rhode Island, now open to the public as a historic house museum. The house has also been known as the Hermann Oelrichs House or the J. Edgar Monroe House.
The Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site preserves the Springwood estate in Hyde Park, New York, United States. Springwood was the birthplace, lifelong home, and burial place of the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt is buried alongside him. The National Historic Site was established in 1945.
Ogden Codman Jr. was an American architect and interior decorator in the Beaux-Arts styles, and co-author with Edith Wharton of The Decoration of Houses (1897), which became a standard in American interior design.
Marble House, a Gilded Age mansion located at 596 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, was built from 1888 to 1892 as a summer cottage for Alva and William Kissam Vanderbilt and was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Beaux Arts style. It was unparalleled in opulence for an American house when it was completed in 1892.
The Staatsburgh State Historic Site preserves a Beaux-Arts mansion designed by McKim, Mead, and White and the home's surrounding landscape in the hamlet of Staatsburg, Dutchess County, New York, United States. The historic site is located within Ogden Mills & Ruth Livingston Mills State Park. The mansion, a New York State Historic Site, is considered a fine example of the great estates built during the Gilded Age.
Hyde Hall is a neoclassical country mansion in Springfield Center, New York, designed by architect Philip Hooker for George Clarke (1768–1835), a wealthy landowner. The house was constructed between 1817 and 1834, and designed with English and American architectural features. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986 for its architecture, and the completeness of its architectural documentary record. It is one of the few surviving works of Philip Hooker, a leading 19th-century American architect.
The Wales House is located on West Market Street near the center of Hyde Park, New York, United States. It is a large brick house dating to the end of the 19th century, an early application of the Colonial Revival architectural style by architect Charles Follen McKim of the New York City firm of McKim, Mead and White.
The Vanderbilt Lane Historic District is a small area along the street of the same name, just east of US 9 in Hyde Park, New York, United States. It was used for the farm functions of the nearby estate of Walter Langdon and, later, Frederick Vanderbilt. Most of its buildings date to the turn of the 19th century, with one remaining from the 1830s.
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Rockwood Hall was a Gilded Age mansion in Mount Pleasant, New York, on the Hudson River. It was best known as the home of William Rockefeller, brother of John D. Rockefeller. Both brothers were co-founders of the Standard Oil Company. Other owners of the house or property included Alexander Slidell MacKenzie, William Henry Aspinwall, and Lloyd Aspinwall. The property was once up to 1,000 acres (400 ha) in size; the mansion at its height had 204 rooms, making it the second-largest private house in the U.S. at the time, only behind the Biltmore mansion in North Carolina. The estate is currently an 88-acre (36 ha) section of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve.
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The Fauconnier Patent was a royal land patent granted in 1705 in Dutchess County, Province of New York. It was the twelfth of fourteen granted between 1685 and 1706 that came to comprise the entirety of the historic county footprint.