London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Wave Hill

Every few years someone or other ‘rediscovers’ the beauty of Wave Hill, the twenty-eight-acre estate, house — two houses, actually — and garden in the Bronx overlooking the waters of the Hudson River.

This time it is the turn of the Financial Times, who sent Andrew Jack to investigate the domain in the Riverdale neighbourhood of the city’s northern borough:

With trees, lawns and varied and colourful year-round flowerbeds overlooking the river, it feels almost as remote as when it was a lengthy carriage ride from the city for William Lewis Morris, the lawyer who built the original Wave Hill House in 1843.

Theodore Roosevelt spent a summer or two here, as did Mark Twain in the later years of his life. George Walbridge Perkins bought it in 1903 and expanded it to include the adjacent Glyndor House.

The ever-crafty Robert Moses persuaded the Perkins-Freeman family to hand Wave Hill over to the City of New York in 1960, and since then it has been carefully looked after and open to the public for a small charge.

(Those Riverdale residents who are not allowed to handle currency on the Jewish Sabbath are allowed to book and pre-pay for entry thus obtaining access without breaking their observance.)

For the past two years, Pratt landscaping graduate Ray Oladapo-Johnson has been in charge of this verdant realm (photographed here by Beowulf Sheehan).

Head over to the FT to read more.

Published at 2:15 pm on Wednesday 17 September 2025. Categories: Errant Thoughts New York Tags: .
Leave a comment

NAME (required)

EMAIL (required)

WEBSITE (not required)

COMMENT

Home | About | Contact | Paginated Index | Twitter | Facebook | RSS/Atom Feed
andrewcusack.com | © Andrew Cusack 2004-present (Unless otherwise stated)