Kykuit Tour
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- July
- 24
I’ve been off for the past week, so this blog has obviously been on a hiatus. I had a busy and far-ranging travel schedule, but one of the places I visited at the end of the week was a tourist attraction very close to home, a place I’d never been to before. In fact, I didn’t even know exactly where it was.
The place was “Kykuit”:http://www.hudsonvalley.org/kykuit/index.htm, the home of oil baron John D. Rockefeller and three subsequent generations of the great Rockefeller clan.
I’m not sure why I went, to tell you the truth. I mean, there’s no water slide at Kykuit. Nor is there a money bin to dive into naked to get that special feeling of what it’s like to be filthy rich. You can’t play “Rich Guy” and order a robotic butler around. Nothin like that. There isn’t even a gift shop.Kykuit isn’t that kind of place. It’s really a museum of “stuff,” mostly exotic and/or modern art collected by Nelson Rockefeller, the late governor of New York and one of five brothers in the family’s third generation.
But I figured, Kykuit is like the Statue of Liberty. Sooner or later, you just gotta go there.
After all, Rockefeller, the patriarch, was the richest American who ever lived. He made his dough in oil and like most of the robber barons of his era he built his fortune with ruthless, monopolistic zeal that enabled him to squash all his competitors like bugs. Dollar for dollar, this cold fish of a tycoon, who nearly lived to be 100, beats out modern-day zillionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
The story goes that he gave out shiny dimes to the children of Pocantico Hills, which I forgot to mentions is where Kykuit is situated atop a 500-foot hill. The word “Kykuit” is a Dutch word that means high place, and indeed the six-story mansion is so high up that the houses and commercial buildings of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow in the valley below are dwarfed by the trees and made invisible. From the vantage point of the rear veranda, the Rockefellers had a panoramic view of the Hudson River, framed by sky and a vast canopy of green.
It cost 23 bucks a ticket to take the basic tour, which includes the first floor, the surrounding garden and the coach house. I liked our tour guide. She was a very nice woman, who knew her stuff.
But the experience was a bit too girly for me, a self-admitted Philistine when it comes to art and expensive place settings. You’re not going to get a lot of history here, or for that matter, any Rockefeller family gossip. If you want to know about Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting exploits and battles to break up Standard Oil, or insights on class differences in the early 20th century and the rise of the anarchist movement, go somewhere else.
I found some relief in the coach house, which features several surreys, which the old titan loved to ride around in. His nostalgic affection for horse-drawn transportation struck me as ironic considering he was the guy who almost single-handedly put us on an oil-based economy.
The coach house had a number of antique cars, including a Model T and a 1918 Caddy. There was also on display a Datsun compact that Nelson
bought after seeing it at the 1964-65 Worlds Fair. I guess it was a farily unique car for its time since it was a Japanese import before Japanese autos became a factor in the decline of General Motors, et. al, but today that little red car looks like a cheap piece of junk from the crappy mid-60s.
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on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 4:03 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
The Rockefeller estate at Pocantico is very special. Most of the grounds are now a public park. When I was a competitive runner I trained on it’s trails religiously. I once had an opportunity to attend an event in the children’s room. What an amazing place, and it has it’s own private golf course. Rockie’s is truly a hidden gem of Westchester County.
For the trust busting take, head across the Sound to Oyster Bay (which you can’t get to from Rye, thank goodness) and visit Sagamore Hill T.R.s home. Although far more modest than Kykuit, you can still feel the vitality of T.R. and imagine him playing with his rambunctious kids. The pet cemetary is still there, and the memorial to Quentin, his aviator son killed in WWI will bring a lump in your throat. Plus, it is as manly a place as you could imagine, but in the best possible way-a tough guy who helped people, left the country considerably better off than he found it, and a wonderful father who instilled the values of service in his children. It is one of my favorite places.
Bob Cypher, Rye, NY
As the current residents of the White House seem to shrink before our very eyes, T.R.s legacy grows by leaps and bounds. Bully for him.
Pocantico in general is a wonderful town that still bears all the marks of the Rockefeller family’s wealth & generosity. It’s main square was a railroad roundhouse, and the little chapel on the square contains some world class stained glass windows. The paths through the preserve come right out onto the town streets, with no fences or barriers, and, like “resident”, I have trained many a happy morning on the pristine gravel paths, beginning before dawn from a secret entrance whose location I will not reveal. The paths were cut for Mr. Rockefeller, who drove his buggy right where we ran in later years. From time to time in the woods you can spy the remains of extensive waterworks, culverts, small dams, & manmade channels, all devised to fool the eye, and appear as if they were not even there. These helped make the preserve “better than nature”, preventing erosion, bogs, or floods. Several families of fourth generation Rockefellers still live on the preserve, in locations I will again, not reveal.
If I had not already bought my little cubicle at Gate of Heaven, I would opt to be scattered on the highest peak in the preserve, clearly the most beautiful and spiritually uplifting spot in Westchester county.
“Robber Baron” ??
Just look what he has given us back!!
Phil,
Sagamore Hill is a great place. You got to love a TR. He was a sickly kid who overcompensated. He was boxing well into middle age, and as a result of one match went blind in one eye. I just finished the book “I Rose like a Rocket” (a reference to his quick move up the ladder in the state legislature) that covers his life from childhood up to his taking office as President. I promised the book to Glenn Blain; You can have it after him.
Yes, Sagamore Hill is great. I’ve been there a few times over the years. The thing I loved best about it is that you get the feeling a real family lived there, that Teddy’s large brood of fun-loving kids had the run of the place. It’s warm in every respect and gives you the feeling that the Roosevelts have just temporarily left the premises and will be returning at any moment.
Kykuit is different in this respect, though the guide told us that Rocky’s kids liked to run through the first floor foyer and music room after playing ball outside. Hard to imagine. In any case, Rocky feared that his boys would accidentally break some of his precious stuff, so he put some of the Chinese artwork under protective glass, which must have made Kykuit feel more like a museum than a home. Can’t image T.R. doing that.
Speak softly and carry a lot of insurance.