Lyndhurst Mansion Is One Of The Jewels Of The Hudson River Valley

Henry James called the Hudson River America’s “great romantic stream,” and having once lived along its banks, I have never forgotten the peacefulness that a long view of it instilled upon my senses as it flowed silently down from West Point southward to the sea. It is certainly one of the richest regions for historic landmarks, and the names of its villages—Spuyten Duyvil, Pocantico Hills, Yonkers, Sleepy Hollow, Katonah, Rhinebeck, Fishkill, Tarrytown—evoke its Native American, Dutch and British legacies. The preservation and restoration of so many historic properties have been consistently among the finest, including Washington Irving’s home, Sunnyside; George Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh; the John Jay Homestead in Katonah; and The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

One of the most extraordinary is Lyndhurst, a half-mile south of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (which New Yorkers still call the Tappan Zee Bridge), of which upon architectural historian William H. Pierson, Jr. said, “when completed in 1866 Lyndhurst was the most profoundly intelligent and provocative house to be built in this country since Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.” And is indisputably America’s finest example of Gothic Revival mansion.

Spread over 67 acres, the estate’s trees had all been planted at a time when this was all farmland. Designed in 1838 by Alexander Jackson Davis on the original hunting grounds of the indigenous Lenape/Munsee tribe.

It was a summer’s retreat for the only three family owners it ever had: William S. Paulding, a military man and politician who was a neighbor of Washington Irving, lived here off and on, as did his son as of the 1850. Owing to Lyndhurst’s unique design, many snickered at it as “Paulding’s Folly.”

The next owner was merchant George Merritt, who, after the Civil War, expanded the structure and updated the interior furnishings with a grand new dining room. Certainly the most famous of Lyndhurst’s occupants was Jay Gould, who purchased the estate in 1880, and, despite having his offices in Manhattan, returned home on his own private steamer to dine with his family each night. History has placed Gould among the most notorious “robber barons” of the Gilded Age, along with fierce competitors like J. Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, although recent revisionist historians have credited him with significant public achievements as well as enormous commitments to charity from which he withheld his name as donor.

Gould died of tuberculosis in 1892, when his eldest daughter Helen, a great philanthropist in her own right, became steward of the estate, adding a Kennel, Laundry Building, Pool Building and Bowling Alley, as well as opening it up for disadvantaged children to learn free sewing, cooking, and carpentry classes and supported many women’s programs. Gould’s youngest daughter, Anna, who was well-known and much sought-after in international society, finally married, becoming the Duchess of Talleyrand-Périgord and moving to France, but she continued to maintain Lyndhurst, which she opened up for charitable events. On her death in 1961, Anna bequeathed the house, which she had kept in impeccable, period condition, to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It opened as a museum and historic site in 1965.

Visiting Lyndhurst today, which includes separate tours of the interior and of the vast estate, can be done in an hour or two, leaving you to also visit nearby Sleepy Hollow or the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers. After being shuttered during the pandemic, Lyndhurst has become more of an attraction than ever, so that the tours fill up fast, making the purchase of tickets in advance essential. You collect your tickets at the former stables and join a group led by long-time guides whose formal knowledge of the estate’s history is leavened with anecdotes about those who have come through over decades.

Despite the imposing size and looming towers of the edifice, the sense that this really was a family retreat is palpable in finding that for much of its early days there was no electricity or gas with which to heat and light the house. The original rooms are not as spacious as one might have imagined for a very wealthy family, but Merritt’s additions gave it both breadth and depth, especially in the upstairs gallery whose Tiffany windows (among many Tiffany works) brings in the Hudson Valley light to the great advantage of the extraordinary collection of European and American artwork displayed. Just above the gallery is a room where a small group of musicians and singers would perform.

The library is arrayed with rare 19^th century volumes, and the bedrooms are all of a different style, including Anna’s, which copied the beauty of the arched ceilings Paris’s Sainte-Chapelle. The amount of carved wood, balustrades, walls painted to look like marble, and bas-relief wallpaper has a range few museums possess within such a compact space, and the fact that it has been so little altered in over 175 years has made it an ideal place for shooting period TV shows and films that have included Count Dracula’s castle in House of Dark Shadows (1970) and The Gilded Age series; it has also hosted the 2022 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Throughout the time when Lyndhurst is open (it closes this year after Christmas and re-opens in March), activities and presentations are held, which includes an M&M Performing Arts and Red Monkey Theater production of the Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League.”

The house is completely festooned for the holidays, with several performances in December of “Mr. Dickens Tells a Christmas Carol.” On December 11 the Collective Brass ensemble performs at the Carriage House with seasonal favorites, including “The Nutcracker” and the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

And behind it all flows the majestic Hudson River and beyond that the rest of America.