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Wave Hill

Park · Riverdale, New York

Wave Hill House

A 28-acre (11 ha) estate in the Hudson Hill section of Riverdale, at West 249th Street and Independence Avenue. It currently consists of public horticultural gardens and a cultural center, with two houses and a botanical garden. On an annual basis, about 65,000 people visit Wave Hill.

History

The original Wave Hill House was a gray fieldstone mansion built in 1843 by William Lewis Morris. William Henry Appleton owned the estate from 1866 to 1903, enlarging the house between 1866 and 1869 and again in 1890. George Walbridge Perkins, a partner of J. P. Morgan, purchased it in 1903, and in 1960 the Perkins-Freeman family deeded Wave Hill to the City of New York.

Huxley visited; the Roosevelts rented the estate in 1870 and 1871; Twain leased it from 1901 to 1903; and Toscanini lived there from 1942 to 1945.

Wave Hill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and Wave Hill House was designated a New York City Landmark on June 21, 1966.

Visit

West 249th Street and Independence Avenue, Bronx, NY

Photo "Wave Hill House": Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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