The Upper Class on the Hudson River
Posted on November 1, 2014 by bob in Features, Travel
by Andrea Gross; photos by Irv Green
Samuel Morse Estate garden
There’s no doubt about it. If I lived in the days before air-conditioning and had oodles of cash to spare, I too would escape the sweltering summers of New York City by building a mega-mansion in the Hudson River Valley. I would have it designed by one of the top architects in the country, decorated with the finest art and antiques and surrounded by formal gardens equal to or better than those in Europe.
Then, as the weather heated up and the winter social season wound down, my family and I would leave our Manhattan home, take a steamship — or possibly a railroad — to the east bank of the Hudson, and move into our fifty, or sixty or seventy-room manor house. Once we were comfortably ensconced, we’d picnic and party until the weather cooled and it was time to move back to the city.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this seasonal migration was de rigueur for financially successful and socially prominent New Yorkers. The men, who were mostly self-made entrepreneurs or the scions of self-made entrepreneurs, wanted to live as though they had, in both the literal and figurative sense, been to the manor born.
Many of their opulent estates are now open to the public and located within the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, a 150-mile swath of land running from Troy (just north of Albany) to New York City. My husband and I anchor ourselves in the Mid-Hudson region of Dutchess County, which contains the summer homes of the most interesting, or at least the most well-known, of the super-elites.
Vanderbilt Mansion
Our first stop: the Vanderbilt Mansion, owned by Frederick Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad baron Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt. As we tour the mansion, the guide tells us that at Grandpa’s death in 1877, he was worth $105 million, which if converted into today’s dollars would make him almost four times as rich as Bill Gates. When I hear this, I’m surprised that the house, although filled with carved ceilings, marble columns, heavy drapes and delicate tapestries, has only 54 rooms.
“This is the smallest of the Vanderbilts’ 40-plus homes,” explains the guide. “His relatives called it ‘Uncle Freddie’s cottage on the Hudson.’”
The Vanderbilt Mansion gives a whole new meaning to the word cottage.
Roosevelt Estate
The nearby homes of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt are more modest when taken individually, but the property, which comprises The Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site at Hyde Park, contains three separate homes. Springwood, where FDR spent many of his pre-presidential years, is a mere 20,000 square feet, and the antiques and art are mixed with family mementos. Of course, the stuffed birds collected by the child of the family might be less interesting had that child not grown up to be president of the United States!
After FDR’s father died, the home and surrounding land passed to Sara, Franklin’s mother. From that time on she not only controlled the family money, to a large extent she controlled her only son.
Statue of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
For example, before allowing him to build a small retreat on a heavily wooded part of the property, she made him promise that he would never spend the night in that house. She worried that if he needed medical attention, an ambulance might find it difficult to navigate the forest roads in the dark.
Franklin, who at that time was probably the most important man in the world, protested but eventually agreed to his mother’s demands, and Top Cottage, which is a cottage in the traditional rather than Vanderbiltian sense of the word, was built in 1938. Our 32nd president, says our guide, may have had his way with world leaders, but not with his own mother!
The only part of the estate that wasn’t under Sara’s direct control was Val-Kill, the Dutch Colonial home of Eleanor. Eleanor wanted cozy and comfortable, and that is exactly what she got. The knotty pine walls are covered with photos of family and friends, the overstuffed chairs are mismatched, and the dishes on the table look exactly like those used by many middle-class housewives in the mid-twentieth century — including my own mother-in-law.
Home of Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse Code.
We tour two other estates: Wilderstein, the home of Margaret “Daisy” Suckley, who was a distant cousin and “close friend” of Franklin Roosevelt — “How close,” says the guide, “is not known.” — and Locust Grove, the home of Samuel Morse, a man who is best remembered as the inventor of the telegraph and the code that bears his name.
We’ll have to visit the other mansions on our next visit. As we’ve learned, the Hudson Valley is the place to be in the summer. The mega-rich of yesteryear have told us so.
