Sunnyside - home of Washington Irving - mime 02

            A mime greets a child at Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving.  This mime stood on an overturned washtub, and held stock-still for several minutes.  He then would move robotically, in small ways, and shock the passersby.  When small kids were enraptured by him, he would move a bit more -- and shake hands.

Washington Irving first saw the Van Tassel cottage when he was 15 years old.  It was a simple stone house with a central chimney, built either in 1656 and or in the 1680s.  (Irving chose the former date.)  Irving quickly began renovating the home.  A stone ell was built, projecting from the center of the north wall. The roof was raised and covered with with red tile. A porch with a room above it was added at the center of the south wall. All the gables were crowstepped in the Dutch style. A wooden porch was added to the west side of the house.  In the rear of the house, Irving laid out a kitchen yard with wood shed, root cellar, and a servants' privy.  North of the the kitchen yard, he built a Gothic ice house in 1840.  (The Irving family tore it down in the late 19th century and built an addition to the house over the site.  This was removed during an 1958-1959 restoration.)  In 1847, Irving added a three-story stone tower at the northeast corner of the house.  Covered in stucco, as was the rest of the house, it was connected to the main home by a short one-story passage.  The tower combined elements of Gothic and Chinese pagoda architecture.  It contained three servants' bedrooms, a guest room, and a basement. The passageway housed two pantries and a laundry.

The kitchen occupied the northern arm of the ell, while a parlor occupied the other arm. The dining room was in the west part of the house, while Irving's study and library were in the east. The top floor was divided into bedrooms.

Like many wealthy gentlemen of the early Republic, Washington Irving loved landscaping.  Colonial-era landscaping featured symmetry, gravel and brick paths, showy beds of annual flowers, geometric forms, broad vistas, and decorative elements like wrought iron benches.  About 400 feet northwest of the house were a kitchen and flower garden, both laid out in geometric form.  He built a greenhouse just north of the gardens.  Below the house, close to the shore of the Hudson River, he built a barn, coach house, shed and some other outbuildings in a quadrangle.

In 1846, the Hudson River Railroad began pushing south of Albany to New York City.  The railroad track was located just 150 feet from the porch of Sunnyside.  The railroad meant that the quadrangle of buildings had to be demolished.  A small cove south of the property was filled in (the circular depression can be seen from the air).   Irving used the opportunity to dam a brook which flowed through
his property.  In a copse of trees (just west of Daffodil Hill) he built an ice pond.  Ice from the pond would be harvested in the winter and stored in his ice house.  Above Sunnyside Lane (the main access road to the house), he created another dam and named the man-made pond "Little Mediterranean."  The Little Mediterranean furnished his house with water for the kitchen and laundry as well as with water for two new flush toilets.

Sunnyside remained in the Irving family after Irving's death in 1859.  The family demolished the ice house and built another wing north of the main house in 1896.  It also built a new quadrangle of buildings east of the main house on the shore of Little Mediterranean.  John D. Rockefeller bought the property in 1945.  He established a foundation, Sleepy Hollow Restorations, to maintain the house and grounds and put them on display for the public.  The house and grounds were restored between 1945 and 1947, and the home opened to the public in 1947.  In 1959-1960, the 1896 wing was removed and the kitchen yard reconstructed.  Sunnyside Lane was closed to vehicular traffic at this time as well, and a new entrance road east of the property constructed.  This road, which is Sunnyside's entrance today, leads to a parking lot located between the 1896 "visitor's center" and the reconstructed gardens.

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Taken on: October 8, 2011

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Sunnyside

New York state

Sets appears in: • Sunnyside, home of Washington Irving

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, f/5.6, 1/100 sec, 119mm, ISO 500 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens:	28-300mm
Aperture:	f/5.6
Exposure Time:	0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal Length:	119mm
ISO:	500
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows
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