Lyndhurst, Jay Gould Estate

About this property

Lyndhurst, also known as the Jay Gould estate, is a Gothic Revival country house that sits in its own 67-acre (27 ha) park beside the Hudson River in Tarrytown, New York, about a half mile south of the Tappan Zee Bridge on US 9. The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. One of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century American decorative arts, architecture, and landscaping, it is part of Westchester County's historical Millionaires' Row. The mansion was designed in 1838 by Alexander Jackson Davis and completed in 1842. The estate and the mansion were owned in succession by New York City mayor William Paulding Jr., merchant George Merritt, railroad tycoon Jay Gould, and Gould's daughters, prominent philanthropist Helen Miller Gould Shepard, and socialite Anna Gould. Paulding, who was born in the Tarrytown area, bought the property as a summer retreat. He named his house "Knoll", although critics quickly dubbed it "Paulding's Folly" because of its unusual design that includes fanciful turrets, pointed arches, and asymmetrical outline, which was considered eccentric in the post-colonial era. Stone blocks for its limestone exterior were quarried by prisoners at nearby Sing Sing prison (in present-day Ossining, New York). Merritt, the estate's second owner, engaged Davis as his architect, and in 1864–1865 doubled the size of the house to 14,000 sq ft (1,300 m2), renaming it "Lyndenhurst" after the estate's linden trees. Davis' new north wing included an imposing four-story tower, a new porte-cochere (the old one was reworked as a glass-walled vestibule), a new dining room, two bedrooms and servants' quarters. A member of the prominent Gould family and one of the wealthiest people in the United States, Jay Gould purchased the property in 1880 to use as a country house. He shortened its name to "Lyndhurst", which he sometimes spelled "Lindhurst", and occupied it until he died in 1892. Gould's elder daughter, Helen Miller Gould Shepard, made an indelible mark on the estate and its legacy by repurposing some buildings and constructing several new ones to serve the local Tarrytown community and charitable causes. In 1961, Gould's other daughter, Anna Gould, donated the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The property is now open to the public. The mansion's rooms are strongly Gothic in character. Hallways are narrow, windows small and sharply arched, and ceilings are fantastically peaked, vaulted, and ornamented. The effect is at once gloomy, somber, and highly romantic; the large, double-height art gallery provides a contrast of light and space.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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