Philipsburg Manor and Kykuit

Our exploration of the Hudson Valley continues! There are several manors and estates that we have been on our list of things to do. Lyndon has been talking about going to the Rockefeller estate, Kykuit, for ages now, and we took advantage of him having some time off lately.

 The first stop of the day was to the Philipsburg Manor. We took this beautiful wooded path out the Manor with our tour group and went back in time to the year 1750 according to our tour guide. We visited the main house where we learned how the Philipses lived during that time. They were Dutch traders located in New York and used their Manor in the Hudson Valley as a trading center. Cosette and Henry were welcome and able to participate a lot during the tour. Cosette demonstrated how to carry pails of milk from the barn to the kitchen using a shoulder yoke, churn butter, and showed off how strong she was by picking up a dutch oven.  Henry decided to sit out and be a "silent" observer on the tour. Cosette particularly enjoyed the tour, which was a surprise! She has become very vocal and talkative to pretty much everyone we meet, and having the children participate on the tour certainly helped make it a much more meaningful experience. There were a couple more buildings on the farm we could tour, but we skipped out on them in order to make it to our tour of Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate.  


Kykuit is the Rockefeller estate that John D. Rockefeller built for his family and four generations of Rockefellers have lived there. The house and grounds are incredible! The tour starts at the visitors center where you take a bus up to the highest point in the area where the estate is located. Kykuit is the Dutch name for lookout which is appropriate as it looks out over the hudson valley. The view from the back balcony is incredible! I was pretty much in love with the house and grounds. The facade and fountain in the front alone were worth the trip. Actually, the stable was worth the trip. It didn't look like any old regular stable, more like a gothic architectural masterpiece. The whole place was impressive. Different generations of the family collected different types of art work. The house was filled with Chinese ceramics, modern sculptures, and my favorite piece there, a modern painting in the living room. I wish I could remember what it was called, but I can't. I do know that the MOMA, which was set up by Abby Rockefeller, borrowed the piece and then did not want to give it back. So the Rockefellers who it belonged to at the time asked the artist to make them a copy and he did. We heard a lot of great stories about the four generations of Rockefellers who lived there including using a can of Campbell's soup to prop up the TV because it was slightly tilted to the left. 
The kids held out pretty well on the tour. Cosette much prefered the Philipsburg Manor, I think only because that was the first tour we took that day. Towards the end of the tour she asked, "Why did Daddy make us come here?". It made me laugh. She made sure we got back to the bus on time to go back to the visitors center.  













It was a fun day and we came away with a greater appreciation for the year 1750 and the Rockefeller legacy. 

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