Sunnyside (Tarrytown, New York)
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Sunnyside is a historic house on 10 acres of grounds alongside the Hudson River in Tarrytown, New York. It was formerly the home of noted early American author Washington Irving, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is now operated as a museum by Historic Hudson Valley, which charges an admission fee.
Sunnyside contains a large collection of Irving's original furnishings and accessories. In particular, all furniture and most accessories in his writer's study are original. The dining room, drawing room, and picture gallery, as well as most bedrooms, are open to the public and contain much of their original furnishings.
In some sense, Sunnyside began almost 200 years before Irving with Wolfert Acker, a Dutch-American inhabitant of the region. His property, "Wolfert's Roost", was part of the Manor of Philipsburg; it contained the simple two-room cottage (built 1656) and surrounding land that Irving purchased in June 1835 from Benson Ferris for $1,800. Indeed Irving wrote a story, Wolfert's Roost, about Acker and the site. As Irving wrote at the time:
- You have been told, no doubt, of a purchase I have made of ten acres, lying at the foot to Oscar's farm, on the river bank. It is a beautiful spot, capable of being made a little paradise. There is a small stone Dutch cottage on it, built about a century since, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels. I have had an architect up there, and shall build upon the old mansion this summer. My idea is to make a little nookery somewhat in the Dutch style, quaint, but unpretending. It will be of stone.
Irving requested that George Harvey become his aesthetic collaborator and foreman in the house's subsequent remodeling and enlargement. The result with its wisteria-covered, stepped-gable entrance and Spanish tower, are instantly recognizable. In its time, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. said that Sunnyside stood "next to Mount Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our land."
Irving died of a heart attack in his bedroom at Sunnyside on November 8, 1859. The Irving family continued to inhabit the cottage until 1945, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. purchased the house. He opened it to the public in 1947.
A partial replica of Sunnyside may be found in the Washington Irving Memorial Park and Arboretum in Bixby, Oklahoma, with a statue of Irving seated on the side porch.
