Lyndhurst: Jay Gould's Gothic Castle on the Hudson

The mansion that rises on sixty-seven acres above the Hudson River in Tarrytown is one of the most theatrical buildings in America, and it has always attracted owners to match.

Alexander Jackson Davis designed the original house in eighteen thirty-eight for William Paulding, a former mayor of New York City, who called it The Knoll. Davis was the leading American architect of the Gothic Revival, and here he worked in full command of the style: pointed arches, soaring towers, battlements, stained glass, and vaulted ceilings that make the interior feel more like a cathedral than a country house. It was an argument about what American architecture should aspire to, dressed up as a river view.

A merchant named George Merritt bought the property in eighteen sixty-four and hired Davis again to expand it. Merritt doubled the house, adding a dining room, new bedrooms, and a tower with his children's initials carved into the stone. He renamed it Lyndenhurst, after the linden trees on the grounds.

In eighteen eighty, it came to its most famous owner: Jay Gould, the railroad magnate, speculator, and the most feared financier of the Gilded Age. Gould had tried to corner the gold market in eighteen sixty-nine, triggering the financial panic known as Black Friday. He controlled the Union Pacific and the Missouri Pacific railroads. He owned Western Union. He was described by contemporaries as a spider in a web of capital, and he was largely comfortable with the characterization. He shortened the name to Lyndhurst and used it as his family retreat until his death in eighteen ninety-two.

Gould's daughter Anna donated the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in nineteen sixty-one. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-six. The house Davis designed for a mayor, expanded for a merchant, and inhabited by the era's most feared financier now stands open to anyone who wants to walk through it. The pointed arches have outlasted all of them.