Sunnyside (Tarrytown, New York)

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Sunnyside today
View around 1860

Sunnyside is the former estate of the American writer Washington Irving (1783-1859) in the city of Tarrytown , New York . It has been recognized as a National Historic Landmark since December 1962, and was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in October 1966 .

Sunnyside goes back to the Dutch colonial days of New York ; around 1680 (according to Washington Irving's information as early as 1656) the settler Wolfert Acker is said to have built his house here and named it "Wolfert's Rust" according to his maxim, Lust in Rust ("joy in peace"). Irving decorated the origins of the property in his story Woolfert's Roost with further details, the factuality of which, however, can be doubted. After Acker's death, the house became the property of the Van Tassel family. In the Revolutionary War it was burned and built in its place a new stone house with two rooms.

It was this house that Irving first saw when he was fifteen in 1798 on a visit to Tarrytown. He lived in Europe between 1820 and 1832; With his " Sketch Book " (The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon) published in 1819-20 , he became internationally famous as a writer during this time. Several "sketches" from this volume, including the short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Sage of the Sleepy Gorge , are located in the vicinity of Tarrytown, the valley of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains and led to a transfiguration of the in the 1820s Area as a romantic place of longing. After his triumphant return to America, Irving first settled in New York City. In 1835 he bought the Van Tassel estate, near the setting of his most famous stories, and had it expanded considerably under the direction of the young Boston architect George Harvey. The new two-storey building was provided with stepped gables in the Dutch style and a wide gothic wooden veranda. He had a plaque with an inscription put up over the entrance portal. Over the years, other outbuildings followed, in 1847 the striking three-story corner tower with its eye-catching pagoda roof ; the four hectare property was carefully transformed into a romantic landscaped garden. In 1859, the year of Irving's death, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. noted that Sunnyside had become "the nation's most famous and beloved home" after Mount Vernon . After Irving's death, the house remained in the family until 1945, when it was acquired by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , who opened it to the public as a museum in 1947.

literature

Web links

Commons : Sunnyside (Tarrytown, New York)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: New York. National Park Service , accessed January 31, 2020.
  2. ^ Sunnyside in the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed January 31, 2020.

Coordinates: 41 ° 2 '52 "  N , 73 ° 52' 12"  W.