Historic Rockwood Hall (Remaining sections)

The historic district encompasses the National Historic Landmark listing for Kykuit which contains 250 acres and unifies all the remaining intact features of the Rockefeller family's Pocantico Hills estate, including the remaining portions of Rockwood Hall, into one comprehensive district.

Rockwood Hall once belonged to William A. Rockefeller, who purchased the estate from the Aspinwall family in 1886. He enlarged the existing stone mansion on the Hudson River, where he also constructed a private power plant, railroad siding and dock. The estate eventually contained 1000 acres with two large stables, gate houses, farm houses, greenhouses and miles of pleasure roads.

The Rockwood Hall Estate was subsumed by the adjacent Pocantico Hills estate following William Rockefeller's death.The 204-room stone villa was demolished in 1941-42. What remains today are the designed landscape around it and the carriage paths which connected the property to the lands to the east developed by John D. Rockefeller Sr. and son.

Rockwood Hall was built on land which was once part of Philipse Manor. As loyalists, the Philipse family forfeited their property after the Revolutionary War, and the Beekmans, lineal descendents of the Philipse family, inherited much of the land which stayed fairly intact until the late 1840s. In 1848 Edwin Bartlett bought 150 acres of the Beekman Woods along the present Albany Post Road above North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow). Bartlett engaged the English Architect, Gervase Wheeler to design an English Gothic castle. He named the property Rockwood Hall due to a stone quarry on the property, as well as the tract being known as Beekman's Wood. Aptly, the house was also built of cut stone. Bartlett conveyed his property in 1860 to his business associate William Aspinwall.

In 1848, Aspinwall, Bartlett, Richard Alsop and the Howland family founded the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. The same year, the Columbia, the company's first side wheeler embarked on a perilous but successful 17,000 mile voyage to San Francisco circumnavigating South America. The company went on to build the Panama Pacific Railroad which provided passage across the isthmus creating a great saving in time and money. The firm had a monopoly on the carrying trade as the shortest passage between the east and west coast. This situation prevailed until the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad came into being in 1869. During the intervening years the company netted $6,000,000 making Aspinwall (the President) one of the richest men in New York.

While Aspinwall only used Rockwood as a summer residence, it was constantly improved under his ownership. Following his death in 1875, his son, General Lloyd Aspinwall, moved into Rockwood. In 1886 William Rockefeller purchased the property for $150,000. Again the property was improved under the new owner with immense stables and carriage houses built. Rockefeller constructed a private power plant, a railroad siding for his private car and a station. A dock was built on the Hudson River to accommodate pleasure crafts and a steam launch. There were lodge houses, farm houses and greenhouses. The gardens and grounds were similarly enhanced.

After William Rockefeller's death in 1922, his property was added to the family's Pocantico Hills estate. As has been the family custom with houses that were not in use or no longer served a useful purpose, Rockwood Hall was torn down in 1941-42. What remains today are the designed landscape around it and the carriage paths which connected the property to the lands to the east developed by John D. Rockefeller Sr. and son.

National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Rockefeller Pocantico Hills Estate Historic District, prepared by William E. Krattinger, NYS Division for Historic Preservation, 2018.

Albee, Allison, "The Case of the Missing Castle," The Westchester Historian, Vol. 45, Fall, 1969, Number 4.

Chernow, Ron, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., New York, Random House, 1998.

Berthold, Victor M., The Pioneer Steamer Columbia, 1932.

"Rockwood Hall, Tarrytown, NY," American Gardening, Vol. XVI, No. 47, (September 28, 1895).

Gulliver, Harold G., "Rockwood Hall on Hudson," Country Life, Vol. XLIII, No. 5 (March 1923).