Kykuit Rockefeller Estate
— — the house that watches the river decide.
Not only on a wall.
“The six-story stone house John D. Rockefeller built above the Hudson at Pocantico Hills. Beech allées, a Japanese teahouse, and a garden of mid-century sculpture — Calder, Moore, Nevelson — held quietly on terraces stepping down toward Tappan Zee. Four generations of one family lived here, and the river kept doing what it does. The National Trust holds it now. Tours start from Philipsburg Manor, a few miles south, and the property closes for the season once the first hard frost works through the gardens.
Kykuit Rockefeller Estate, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kykuit sits on a rise in Pocantico Hills, in Westchester County, roughly twenty-five miles north of Manhattan and a few hundred feet above the Hudson River. The six-story stone house was built between 1906 and 1913 for Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller and his son. Four generations of the family lived on the estate, including Nelson Rockefeller, who served as Governor of New York and Vice President. The property passed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1979 and is operated for public visits by Historic Hudson Valley, with tours beginning at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow.
The house is faced in rough-cut Indiana limestone, with a classical west façade added by architect William Welles Bosworth in the 1913 reworking. Bosworth also laid out the formal gardens that step west toward the Hudson — Italianate terraces, a Temple of Aphrodite, and Nelson Rockefeller's later additions, a Japanese garden and teahouse. Set into the lawns and inner gardens is a sculpture collection assembled by Nelson Rockefeller in the 1930s through the 1970s, with works by Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, and David Smith. The pieces were sited by the family rather than a museum, which is part of why the grounds feel inhabited.
Kykuit is open seasonally, generally early May through early November, and is reached only by guided tour booked through Historic Hudson Valley. Tours depart from Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, where visitors park and board a shuttle up to the estate. The classic Grand Tour runs roughly three hours and covers the main floors of the house, the art galleries in the basement, the gardens, and the coach barn with its carriages and automobiles. Tickets are timed and the property closes once the Hudson Valley turns toward winter, so weekend slots in October book well in advance.