Carrollcliffe, now the Castle Hotel & Spa, and also having been known as Axe Castle, is a building in Tarrytown, New York which was constructed to resemble a European castle, with crenellated towers. It is now a hotel, a member of the Historic Hotels of America.
It is built of stone in 1897 and 1910, and has towers and turrets. It was originally named Carrollcliffe and was built for "General" Howard Carroll, a journalist, playwright and businessman, with intention that it should be reflect Norman castles in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
It was built in two stages between 1897 and 1910 as the residence of General Howard Carroll, a newspaperman and playwright, to a design by the architect Henry Franklin Kilburn.
Beginning in 1941, it served for decades as the headquarters of the financial firm Axe-Houghton Management.
It was converted to a hotel during 1994-96.
New owners Hanspeter and Steffi Walder of Tarrtown bought the property along with a group of investors in 1992. Their vision was to re-create Carrollcliff's glory days. The couple's vision was to convert the Castle into a luxury inn while rediscovering, and ultimately preserving the Castle's original beauty and charm. Their goal, Hanspeter says, is the operation of a hotel and restaurant that can be a haven for the stressed executive or professional desiring to relax in a setting that is warm, inviting, and majestic.
In 2003, Elite Hotels, a limited liability company formed by C. Dean Metropoulos, bought the property, then called The Castle at Tarrytown for $10.9 million, according to a newspaper article at the time, which described it as "a 31-room inn on 10.1 acres". It is now a hotel and spa.
Overlooking the Hudson River valley, it is located on the highest point of Westchester County, about 20 miles (32 km) north of the George Washington Bridge.

Carrollcliffe

Account

by category

Login

Name

by region

Title

Name in English

Lyndhurst, also known as the Jay Gould estate, is a Gothic Revival country house that sits in its own 67-acre (27 ha) park beside the Hudson River in Tarrytown, New York, about a half mile south of the Tappan Zee Bridge on US 9. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
History
Designed in 1838 by Alexander Jackson Davis, the house was owned in succession by New York City mayor William Paulding Jr., merchant George Merritt, and railroad tycoon Jay Gould.
Paulding named his house "Knoll", although critics quickly dubbed it "Paulding's Folly" because of its unusual design that includes fanciful turrets and asymmetrical outline. Its limestone exterior was quarried at Sing Sing in present-day Ossining, New York.
Merritt, the house's second owner, engaged Davis as his architect, and in 1864–1865 doubled the size of the house, renaming it "Lyndenhurst" after the estate's linden trees. Davis' new north wing included an imposing four-story tower, a new porte-cochere (the old one was reworked as a glass-walled vestibule), a new dining room, two bedrooms and servants' quarters.
Gould purchased the property in 1880 to use as a country house, shortened its name to "Lyndhurst" and occupied it until his death in 1892. In 1961, Gould's daughter Anna Gould donated it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The house is now open to the public.
Architecture
Unlike later mansions along the Hudson River, Lyndhurst's rooms are few and of a more modest scale, and strongly Gothic in character. Hallways are narrow, windows small and sharply arched, and ceilings are fantastically peaked, vaulted, and ornamented. The effect is at once gloomy, somber, and highly romantic; the large, double-height art gallery provides a contrast of light and space.
The house sits within a landscape park, designed in the English naturalistic style by Ferdinand Mangold, whom Merritt hired. Mangold drained the surrounding swamps, created lawns, planted specimen trees, and built a conservatory. The park is an outstanding example of 19th-century landscape design with a curving entrance drive that reveals "surprise" views of rolling lawns accented with shrubs and specimen trees. The 390-foot-long (120 m) onion-domed, iron-framed, glass conservatory, when built, was one of the largest privately owned greenhouses in the United States.
In popular culture
ABC's holiday television film The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (1979), a.k.a. The Night Dracula Saved the World, was shot here. The scenes were used as the backdrop for both Count Dracula and the Witch's castle. It later aired on the Disney Channel during its Halloween season, until the late 1990s.
From 1992 until the program changed filming locations from New York to Los Angeles in 2009, Lyndhurst served as the exterior of “Wildwind,” the home of Dimitri Marick, in establishing shots on the ABC daytime drama All My Children. Elements of Lyndhurst’s interior architecture influenced the design of the Wildwind sets.
Lyndhurst was the set for the movies House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), both based on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.
Director Sidney Lumet used Lyndhurst as a film location twice: for Reversal of Fortune (1990) and Gloria (1999).
The History Channel's The Men Who Built America filmed at Lyndhurst in the summer of 2012.
Winter's Tale (2013) was filmed at Lyndhurst in January 2013.
Lyndhurst was featured on Season 1, Episode 3 of Travel Channel's Castle Secrets & Legends series (original airdate February 9, 2014).
Lyndhurst was also used as a filming location for ABC's Forever in 2014, using the cottage on the property for exterior shots.
Lyndhurst's landscape, bowling alley, and mansion interior were used as a filming location for NBC's The Blacklist, starring James Spader.
In 2017, the Lifetime series Project Runway filmed an episode at Lyndhurst, challenging the designers to draw inspiration from the exteriors and gardens.
For 2021, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show will be held at Lyndhurst in June. This move was made over concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, resulting in a four-month delay.

Lyndhurst

The William E. Ward House, known locally as Ward's Castle, is located on Magnolia Drive, on the state line between Rye Brook, New York and Greenwich, Connecticut, United States. It is a reinforced concrete structure built in the 1870s.
Ward, a mechanical engineer, built the house with his friend Robert Mook to demonstrate the viability of the material for building. It is the first reinforced concrete building in the United States. It was later purchased by Mort Walker, creator of the comic strip Beetle Bailey, who opened it as the Museum of Cartoon Art until 1992.
Building
The house is located in a residential neighborhood a short distance from where state highway NY 120A leaves the state line for a southwesterly heading into downtown Port Chester. Most of the house's 8-acre (3.2 ha) lot is located on the Connecticut side of the state line, where it is open and slopes downward to the east and the Byram River. Because of this it is possible to see Long Island Sound from the house. A short driveway leads in from Magnolia Avenue on the Rye Brook side.
The building itself is made entirely of reinforced concrete, from the foundation to the mansard roof that caps the two-story main block. Wood was used only for door and window frames. A four-story crenellated tower with decorative machicolation rises above the southeast corner. Like the house it has imitation quoins on the corners of its lower two stories. A one-story wing projects to the west.
A wraparound porch with round columns covers the south (front) elevation of the main block. The eastern two-thirds and tower are in Connecticut; the western third and wing are in New York. The mansard roof is pierced by classically inspired gabled dormer windows and two concrete chimneys; a third is on the west side. The roofline is marked by a modillioned cornice. On the north (rear) a two-story service wing connects to a water tower, stylistically similar to the house's tower. Another small wing projects from the east, overlooking the parking area.[
The first floor has a central hallway with drawing room, reception room and dining room. A breakfast room and sun room are in the wing. Another central hall on the second floor leads to three bedrooms and a library with decorative woodwork in an Elizabethan mode. Above it is a similar floor with bedrooms and storage space.
The only other building on the property is the caretaker's cottage. It is a two-story frame house built in the late 19th century and located in a grove of trees to the north of the main house, in New York. The period landscaping on the property includes a variety of ornamental trees.
History
Ward worked in collaboration with architect Robert Mook over three years to build the house. His goal was not only to build a house for himself, but that it be effectively fireproof. It was made entirely of Portland cement and light iron I-beams and rods, even in the roof. Wood was only used for door and window frames and their decorative trim. Ward's mother also had a fear of fire, which contributed to his desire to construct a fireproof residence.
Mook contributed a design in keeping with the tastes of the time. The main block and its mansard roof are in high Second Empire architectural style, and the more Gothic tower allows for panoramic views over Long Island Sound. The other tower is a water tower, meant to offer additional fire protection as well as a drinking supply. The architect and engineer left the concrete unfinished to better display it.
Architectural publications carried articles about the house as early as year before construction was finished. Its completion in 1876 prompted even longer articles, and mentions in overseas publications. Seven years later, in 1883, Ward presented his own paper on the house's construction to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Sometimes called the first known reinforced concrete building in the United States (although the Coignet Building in Brooklyn, New York was completed over the winter of 1872-73) critics and scholars have recognized its importance since then, calling it "one of the most remarkable achievements of building art in the century" and "a technical tour de force". Ward's neighbors were less sure, calling it "Ward's Folly" at first, certain it would collapse or otherwise be ruined, but later calling it "Ward's Castle" when it survived. It has remained mostly unaltered, save for the two modern wings, ever since.
From 1976 until 1992 the unaltered castle housed the Museum of Cartoon Art established by Mort Walker two years earlier. Walker bought the dilapidated building for $60,000. He repaired the house and ran the museum with his family. It attracted up to 75,000 visitors per year.
The Ward House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The following year, the structure was jointly designated as a National Historic Civil and Concrete Engineering Landmark by the American Concrete Institute and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ward's Castle

The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City, specializing in European medieval art and architecture, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it contains a large collection of medieval artworks shown in the architectural settings of French monasteries and abbeys. Its buildings are centered around four cloisters—the Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem, Bonnefont and Trie—that were acquired by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard in France before 1913, and moved to New York. Barnard's collection was bought for the museum by financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Other major sources of objects were the collections of J. P. Morgan and Joseph Brummer.
The museum's building was designed by the architect Charles Collens, on a site on a steep hill, with upper and lower levels. It contains medieval gardens and a series of chapels and themed galleries, including the Romanesque, Fuentidueña, Unicorn, Spanish and Gothic rooms. The design, layout, and ambiance of the building is intended to evoke a sense of medieval European monastic life. It holds about 5,000 works of art and architecture, all European and mostly dating from the Byzantine to the early Renaissance periods, mainly during the 12th through 15th centuries. The varied objects include stone and wood sculptures, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, of which the best known include the c. 1422 Early Netherlandish Mérode Altarpiece and the c. 1495–1505 Flemish Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries.
Rockefeller purchased the museum site in Washington Heights in 1930, and donated it and the Bayard collection to the Metropolitan in 1931. Upon its opening on May 10, 1938, the Cloisters was described as a collection "shown informally in a picturesque setting, which stimulates imagination and creates a receptive mood for enjoyment".
History
Formation
The basis for the museum's architectural structure came from the collection of George Grey Barnard, an American sculptor and collector who almost single-handedly established a medieval art museum near his home in the Fort Washington section of Upper Manhattan. Although he was a successful sculptor who had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, his income was not enough to support his family. Barnard was a risk taker and led most of his life on the edge of poverty. He moved to Paris in 1883 where he studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He lived in the village of Moret-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau, between 1905 and 1913, and began to deal in 13th- and 14th-century European objects to supplement his earnings. In the process he built a large personal collection of what he described as "antiques", at first by buying and selling stand-alone objects with French dealers, then by the acquisition of in situ architectural artifacts from local farmers.
George Barnard and Clare Sheridan at his cloister in New York City, 1921
Barnard was primarily interested in the abbeys and churches founded by monastic orders from the 12th century. Following centuries of pillage and destruction during wars and revolutions, stones from many of these buildings were reused by local populations. A pioneer in seeing the value in such artifacts, Barnard often met with hostility to his effort from local and governmental groups. Yet he was an astute negotiator who had the advantage of a professional sculptor's eye for superior stone carving, and by 1907 he had built a high-quality collection at relatively low cost. Reputedly he paid $25,000 for the Trie buildings, $25,000 for the Bonnefort and $100,000 for the Cuxa cloisters. His success led him to adopt a somewhat romantic view of himself. He recalled bicycling across the French countryside and unearthing fallen and long-forgotten Gothic masterworks along the way. He claimed to have found the tomb effigy of Jean d'Alluye face down, in use as a bridge over a small stream. By 1914 he had gathered enough artifacts to open a gallery in Manhattan.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1920
Barnard often neglected his personal finances, and was so disorganized that he often misplaced the origin or provenance of his purchases. He sold his collection to John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1925 during one of his recurring monetary crises. The two had been introduced by the architect William W. Bosworth. Purchased for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the acquisition included structures that would become the foundation and core of the museum. Rockefeller and Barnard were polar opposites in both temperament and outlook and did not get along; Rockefeller was reserved, Barnard exuberant. The English painter and art critic Roger Fry was then the Metropolitan's chief European acquisition agent and acted as an intermediary. Rockefeller eventually acquired Barnard's collection for around $700,000, retaining Barnard as an advisor.
In 1927 Rockefeller hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., son of one of the designers of Central Park, and the Olmsted Brothers firm to create a park in the Fort Washington area. In February 1930 Rockefeller offered to build the Cloisters for the Metropolitan. Under consultation with Bosworth, he decided to build the museum at a 66.5-acre (26.9 ha) site at Fort Tryon Park, which they chose for its elevation, views, and accessible but isolated location. The land and existing buildings were purchased that year from the C. K. G. Billings estate and other holdings in the Fort Washington area. The Cloisters building and adjacent 4-acre (1.6 ha) gardens were designed by Charles Collens. They incorporate elements from abbeys in Catalonia and France. Parts from Sant Miquel de Cuixà, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Bonnefont-en-Comminges, Trie-sur-Baïse and Froville were disassembled stone-by-stone and shipped to New York City, where they were reconstructed and integrated into a cohesive whole. Construction took place over a five-year period from 1934. Rockefeller bought several hundred acres of the New Jersey Palisades, which he donated to the State in an effort to preserve the view from the museum. The Cloisters' new building and gardens were officially opened on May 10, 1938, though the public was not allowed to visit until four days later.
Collection
The museum's collection of artworks consists of approximately five thousand individual pieces. They are displayed across a series of rooms and spaces, mostly separate from those dedicated to the installed architectural artifacts. The Cloisters has never focused on building a collection of masterpieces, rather the objects are chosen thematically yet arranged simply to enhance the atmosphere created by the architectural elements in the particular setting or room in which they are placed. To create the atmosphere of a functioning series of cloisters, many of the individual works, including capitals, doorways, stained glass, and windows are placed within the architectural elements themselves.
Exterior
The building is set into a steep hill, and thus the rooms and halls are divided between an upper entrance and a ground-floor level. The enclosing exterior building is mostly modern, and is influenced by and contains elements from the 13th-century church at Saint-Geraud at Monsempron, France, from which the northeast end of the building borrows especially. It was mostly designed by the architect Charles Collens, who took influence from works in Barnard's collection. Rockefeller closely managed both the building's design and construction, which sometimes frustrated the architects and builders.
The building contains architecture elements and settings taken mostly from four French abbeys, which between 1934 and 1939 were transported, reconstructed, and integrated with new buildings in a project overseen by Collins. He told Rockefeller that the new building "should present a well-studied outline done in the very simplest form of stonework growing naturally out of the rocky hill-top. After looking through the books in the Boston Athenaeum ... we found a building at Monsempron in Southern France of a type which would lend itself in a very satisfactory manner to such a treatment."
The architects sought to both memorialize the north hill's role in the American Revolution and to provide a sweeping view over the Hudson River. Construction of the exterior began in 1935. The stonework, primarily of limestone and granite from several European sources, includes four Gothic windows from the refectory at Sens and nine arcades. The dome of the Fuentidueña Chapel was especially difficult to fit into the planned area. The east elevation, mostly of limestone, contains nine arcades from the Benedictine priory at Froville and four flamboyant French Gothic windows from the Dominican monastery at Sens.
Governance
The Cloisters is governed by the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan's collections are owned by a private corporation of about 950 fellows and benefactors. The board of trustees comprise 41 elected members, several officials of the City of New York, and persons honored as trustees by the museum. The current chairman of the board is the businessman and art collector Daniel Brodsky, who was elected in 2011,[156] having previously served on its Real Estate Council in 1984 as a trustee of the museum and Vice Chairman of the Buildings Committee.
Exhibitions and programs
The museum's architectural settings, atmosphere, and acoustics have made it a regular setting both for musical recitals and as a stage for medieval theater. Notable stagings include The Miracle of Theophilus in 1942, and John Gassner's adaption of The Second Shepherds' Play in 1954. Recent significant exhibitions include "Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures" which ran in the summer of 2017 in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Ontario and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
In popular culture
Since it opened in 1938, The Cloisters has been featured and referenced in many works of popular culture. One of the more prominent uses of the Cloisters as a setting took place in 1948, when director Maya Deren used its ramparts as a backdrop for her experimental film Meditation on Violence. That year, German director William Dieterle used the Cloisters as the location for a convent school in his film Portrait of Jennie. The 1968 film Coogan's Bluff used the site's pathways and lanes for a scenic motorcycle chase.