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, 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.

Kykuit (in modern Dutch spelling Kijkuit, also uitkijk, is a compound noun meaning "lookout, look-out" Kykuit, designed by the firm of Delano & Aldrich, was completed in 1913.

The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. In 1979, its occupant, Nelson Rockefeller, bequeathed upon his death his one-third interest in the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Today, Kykuit is open to the public for tours conducted by Historic Hudson Valley.

Main mansion

Kykuit was designed originally as a steep-roofed three-story stone mansion by the architects Chester Holmes Aldrich and William Adams Delano. Completed in 1913,

Nelson Rockefeller transformed previously empty basement passages beneath the mansion that had led to a grotto into a major private art gallery Shuttle vans run from a visitor center located at the Philipsburg Manor House on Route 9 in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Pocantico, the family estate

thumb|View from Kykuit's entryway

thumb|Dining room

thumb|upright|Music hall

The estate is formally called Pocantico or Pocantico Hills, but is usually referred to by the name of its mansion, Kykuit. It occupies an area of . During much of the 20th century, the estate featured a resident workforce of security guards, gardeners, and laborers, and had its own farming, cattle, and food supplies. It has a nine-hole, reversible golf course, and at one time had 75 houses and 70 private roads, most designed by John D. Rockefeller Sr. and his son. A longstanding witticism about the estate quips: "It's what God would have built, if only He had the money".

In 1901, John D. Rockefeller Sr. hired golf course architect Willie Dunn, the designer of Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, to build a golf course on the grounds.

In late 1946, two of Junior's sons, John D. Rockefeller III and Laurance Rockefeller, each offered their respective residences, Fieldwood Farm and Rockwood Hall, as headquarters for the then newly formed United Nations. Family patriarch Rockefeller Junior vetoed the proposals, as the sites were too isolated from Manhattan. He instead tasked his second son, Nelson, to buy a site along the East River in New York City, which was subsequently donated for the construction of the UN Headquarters.

Among guests hosted by Nelson and his brother David have been American Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and their wives. Other notable visitors have included United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, President of the Republic of South Africa Nelson Mandela, Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King Hussein of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Lord Mountbatten of Burma of the United Kingdom.

, 10 or so Rockefeller families lived within the estate, in the central compound and beyond. Much land has been donated over the decades to New York State, including the Rockefeller State Park Preserve, and is open to the public for horseback riding, biking, and jogging.

The private Rockefeller burial ground at Kykuit abuts, but is not part of, the public Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The plot is reserved for members of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. branch of the family. Family members and descendants of William Rockefeller Jr. are buried at Rockwood Circle in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Residences

Within the park:

  • "Hawes House", home of Nelson Rockefeller
  • "Kent House", home of Laurance Rockefeller

Outside the park:

  • "Abeyton Lodge", home of John D. Rockefeller Jr., demolished when he occupied Kykuit after his father's death
  • "Fieldwood Farm", home of John D. Rockefeller III
  • "Hillcrest", originally built for Martha Baird Rockefeller, second wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr., and current location of the Rockefeller Archive Center
  • "Hudson Pines", former home of David Rockefeller, just north of the Park (), originally built for and occupied by his only sister, Abby; sold after his death for $33 million, it is a private property; 60 acres of the estate land are under permanent protection from development through a conservation easement
  • "Hunting Lodge", second home of Nelson Rockefeller
  • "Rockwood Hall", originally the property of John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s brother, William Rockefeller, and currently part of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve

Notable outbuildings

thumb|Pocantico Conference Center

thumb|[[Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture]]

  • The Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), in the Park, where there are regular conferences.

: Originally the "Coach Barn", a three-story complex ultimately redesigned and completed during 1913–14, in heavy stone from the local area, it was the first new structure built on the estate. It is three times the size of the Kykuit mansion. It still houses an impressive collection of horse-drawn carriages, and an equally noteworthy collection of 12 family-owned vintage cars for public viewing, graphically illustrating the development of automotive design from the early to the mid-twentieth century.

:In 1994, with funding from David Rockefeller and brother Laurance, its lower floor was converted by the New Haven architects Herbert S. Newman and Partners into a modern, fully equipped meeting facility for the Fund's conferences, with limited overnight accommodations on the upper floor. The facilities, furthering the projects and objectives of the RBF through conferences, seminars, workshops and retreats for RBF staff, are also available to both domestic and foreign nonprofit organizations, including annual gatherings of all the major foundation presidents and UN Security Council officials, among numerous other dignitaries.

  • The "Playhouse", the family seat. In the park, this is the location, since 1994, of the regular semi-annual family meetings, in June and December.

:A rambling French Norman two-story structure completed by Junior during 1927, this structure is also three times the size of the Kykuit mansion. Standing alongside the nine-hole, reversible golf course, an outdoor swimming pool and two tennis courts, it contains an indoor swimming pool and tennis court, fully equipped basketball gym, squash court, billiard room and full-size bowling alley. It also has dining and living rooms, and a huge reception room resembling an English baronial hall.

  • The Orangerie, housing citrus plants, this is modeled after the original at the Palace of Versailles
  • The Marcel Breuer House at Pocantico, a modern house designed by Marcel Breuer and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the "House in the Museum Garden" exhibit, then disassembled, shipped to, and reassembled at the estate.
  • Underground Bomb Shelter, the location of cabinet papers and private telephone transcripts delivered to the estate during 1973 - and kept there for an unknown period of time - by the then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
  • The Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, outside the park, was established by David Rockefeller and his daughter Peggy Dulany in 2004 in memory of Rockefeller's wife, Peggy. It is a not-for-profit agricultural and educational facility on of farmland, in the middle of the family-donated Rockefeller State Park Preserve, allied to the family-funded Pocantico Central School. It sells organic local produce, meat, and eggs to the nearby public for-profit restaurant, Blue Hill, as well as to local businesses in the Pocantico Hills area.

Additionally, family members have had a profound effect on the hamlet of Pocantico Hills, which is situated in the open space of the estate completely surrounded by family-owned land. The Union Church of Pocantico Hills, now owned by Historic Hudson Valley, was built by the Rockefeller family, which commissioned stained-glass windows by Matisse (an abstract rose window, memorializing Abby Aldrich) and by Chagall (the remainder of the windows, emphasizing Biblical prophets and some New Testament themes, and memorializing various members of the family and others). They also helped finance the construction of the local Pocantico Hills School.

See also

  • List of National Historic Landmarks in New York
  • National Register of Historic Places listings in northern Westchester County, New York

References

Further reading

  • The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in the Twentieth-Century America, Robert F. Dalzell and Lee Baldwin Dalzell, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2007.
  • Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. Bernice Kert, New York: Random House, 1993.
  • Pocantico: Fifty Years on the Rockefeller Domain, Tom Pyle, as told to Beth Day, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pierce, 1964.
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Ron Chernow, London: Warner Books, 1998.
  • Memoirs, David Rockefeller, New York: Random House, 2002.
  • The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family, John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.
  • Great Houses of the Hudson River, Michael Middleton Dwyer, editor, with preface by Mark Rockefeller, Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, published in association with Historic Hudson Valley, 2001. .
  • Official website
  • HABS: 12 photos, 6 maps and drawings, 23 data pages on Kykuit at the Historic American Buildings Survey
  • Rockefeller Brothers Fund official website—Details the regular conferences held by the Fund at the Pocantico estate.
  • Rockefeller Archive Center is a major repository and research center for the study of philanthropy and its impact throughout the world. The archive houses the records of the Rockefeller Family.
  • "Life at Pocantico Then and Now" A 2002 New York Times interview with David Rockefeller on growing up on the estate.
  • "Spending a Day at the Rockefellers" February 2007 NYT article profiling the family estate.
  • "The Estate Next Door" 2003 NYT article giving a brief overview of the estate.
  • "Development: Rockefeller Kin to Save Land" 2003 NYT article on David Rockefeller's plans for the organic Stone Barns complex and a niece's intervention regarding a housing development on the estate.
  • Welles Bosworth: The Altoviti Aphrodite. Printed 1920.