Pocantico Hills, N.Y - Spending a Day at the Rockefellers’ > 근교여행

THE tranquil hamlet of Pocantico Hills, N.Y., has been bound up with the Rockefellers for more than a century. The family’s imprint is everywhere: In the thousands of acres of nearby pastures, woodlands and lakes that John D. Rockefeller Sr. began acquiring as he created his family’s estate in the 1890s. In the august stone walls enclosing a collection of even more august mansions. And in the stunning stained-glass windows by Matisse and Chagall that grace a simple stone church.

 

The Rockefellers are still an active presence — David Rockefeller, who at 91 is the last of the “brothers” from the illustrious third generation, spends weekends at his farm, Hudson Pines, and still rides in his horse-drawn carriage over the graceful carriage roads designed by his father and grandfather. A number of other Rockefellers — including Happy, the widow of David’s brother Nelson, the former governor and vice president — have houses on the family land as well.

 

Much of the Rockefeller family’s business and pleasure in and around Pocantico Hills is, not surprisingly, out of view. But the tradition of philanthropy that has defined the clan as much as its vast fortune also operates there. The result is a sense of shared bounty.

 

The public has long been allowed to enjoy the Rockefellers’ 55 miles of carriage roads, which also function as hiking trails, and the opportunity to experience Rockefeller country grew with the creation of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. Its 1,384 acres are used for hiking, horseback riding and carriage driving. Martha Stewart, who lives in northern Westchester, has been spotted in her horse-drawn carriage on the trails.

 

The most recent public amenity is the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a nonprofit educational center founded by David Rockefeller as a tribute to his late wife, Peggy. Mrs. Rockefeller raised Simmenthal cattle and was a passionate advocate of farmland preservation. The center, on 80 acres dominated by Norman-style stone barns built in the 1930s by John D. Rockefeller Jr., offers workshops and includes the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, whose chef, Dan Barber, is a proponent of the farm-to-table movement.

 

Kykuit, the spectacular stone mansion that was home to John D. Sr., John D. Jr. and finally Nelson, is not on state land and is closed to tourists in the winter. But there is much more to see in Rockefeller country — and a sunny late-winter day is a good time to explore it.

 

A visitor can hike quiet trails evoking the family’s legacy, with names like Peggy’s Way and Brothers’ Path, and then have lunch in a smartly rustic cafe at Stone Barns — or an elegant dinner at Blue Hill. And while tours of Union Church of Pocantico Hills, with its Chagall and Matisse windows, will not resume until early April, anyone can attend Sunday morning services at 9 and 11. (But be discreet: the pastor, the Rev. Dr. F. Paul DeHoff, noted on the phone that services were for worship, not window viewing.)

 

WHEN the family started buying land there, Westchester was almost entirely rural, with “large areas of woodlands, lakes, fields and streams — teeming with wildlife,” as David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 “Memoirs.” Now it is solidly suburban, and that makes the Rockefeller property all the more remarkable, giving Pocantico Hills a feeling of being frozen in time.

Turn off congested Route 9, which runs along the Hudson River, onto Bedford Road (Route 448), and you seem to have mysteriously fallen off the map and landed in Vermont. Meadows and woods flank the road, which climbs and winds toward the imposing gates of Kykuit (a Dutch word for “lookout,” it is pronounced KIGH-cut).

 

On one side of the road is the handsome brick entrance of Hudson Pines. Visible through a green chain-link fence on the other side is the Playhouse, an impossibly large Tudor-style structure with a bowling alley, indoor pool, gymnasium and tennis and squash courts that are still used by the family.

 

At the top of the hill, just past the entrance to Kykuit, a smattering of smaller houses dot Pocantico Hills, whose centerpiece is a New England-style village green that the Rockefellers carved out with the help of Frederick Law Olmsted years ago. In his memoir, David Rockefeller describes the almost feudal arrangement that existed: “Eventually the family accumulated about 3,400 acres that surrounded and included almost all of the little village of Pocantico Hills, where most of the residents worked for the family and lived in houses owned by Grandfather.”

 

Union Church, also on Bedford Road, was built in 1921 as a community church. The Rockefellers provided almost half the money for the construction, as well as the land. The community was made up of family members and their workers, with a sprinkling of other New Yorkers with country houses in the area.

 

Well-to-do professionals have since moved into most of the houses that were occupied by the family’s staff. But Union Church still retains its Rockefeller aura.

 

“It’s the elephant in the drawing room, so to speak,” said Susan Cavanaugh, the site director of Union Church for Historic Hudson Valley, a nonprofit preservation group that conducts tours. “The family continues to be very interested in the congregation.”

 

Historic Hudson Valley, which John D. Rockefeller Jr. established in 1951, owns the church property and building, leasing it to the congregation. The group is not involved in the worship program, but runs tours six days a week, April through December, highlighting the windows that have long made the tiny nondenominational church a destination.

 

The rose window over the altar was dedicated on Mother’s Day 1956 in memory of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, John D. Jr.’s wife. Mrs. Rockefeller, a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art, collected contemporary art, including works by Matisse. The head of the museum at the time suggested Matisse, then in his 80s, for the memorial window, and approached the artist on the family’s behalf.

 

Matisse accepted the commission, which turned out to be his last. The paper cutouts he used to design the blue, green and yellow window were in his bedroom when he died.

 

A much larger window at the rear of the church, by Marc Chagall, celebrates the life of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who died in 1960. The window tells the biblical story of the good Samaritan in brilliant blues and greens, echoing Matisse’s window.

Unlike Matisse, Chagall traveled to Pocantico Hills to see the church. At the dedication, Chagall broached the subject of the lackluster nave windows. He received a commission to redo all eight, including one in memory of Nelson Rockefeller’s son, Michael, who died in New Guinea in 1961.

 

If the memorial windows represent an extraordinary gift of culture in an unlikely nook of Westchester, the family’s present of the state park preserve was equally significant — a chunk of green space one and a half times the size of Central Park.

A good winter hike in the preserve is along Eagle Hill Trail, a steep ascent that offers panoramic views of the Hudson, farmland and Kykuit. Another scenic walk is on Brothers’ Path, which runs next to Swan Lake near the visitors’ center. Brothers’ Path connects to Brook Trail, which crosses a half-frozen stream: water bubbles beneath thin sheets of ice and the dazzling snow frames dark pools of water.

 

BEYOND the state preserve, much of the land still in Rockefeller hands is posted with private-property signs. Instead of saying keep out, they invite the public to use the trails and follow some basic rules: no picnicking, no bicycles. A friends group raises money to help pay for the maintenance of the carriage roads on the state land.

 

An ideal end to a day in the Rockefellers’ backyard is a stop at the Stone Barns Center, which opened in 2004. A monthly children’s program, which goes on all winter, focuses on different aspects of farming, from honey production to egg laying.

My children, Amelia and Sawyer, 8 and 5, recently took part in a “turnip chores” workshop, harvesting tender white Hakurei turnips in the 22,000-square-foot greenhouse. Afterward, they communed with the farm’s sheep and chickens and glimpsed two-week-old piglets.

 

A gift shop sells playful decorative objects and toys, many with a farm theme, along with David Rockefeller’s “Memoirs.” At the cafe, recent offerings included an egg salad sandwich, grilled pork panini and a spicy venison-and-black-bean soup. A regular standout on the children’s menu is a grilled Gruyère sandwich.

 

Reservations at Blue Hill, a glittering addition to Westchester’s culinary scene, are hard to come by. Groupies are known to speed-dial at 9 a.m. two months in advance for a prime-time slot. But the depths of winter are less frantic. On a recent Sunday evening, local residents shared the dining room with a group of graphic designers from Brooklyn, as well as a couple en route from their weekend house in the Berkshires to their apartment in Manhattan.

 

Waiting for the tasting menus to begin, they nibbled contentedly on delicate gifts from the kitchen: skewered pork croquettes, slivers of air-dried beef and those sweet turnips, raw with a lemon vinaigrette.

 

The setting is as seductive as the food. A former dairy barn with vaulted ceilings and wide-plank floors, the dining room is both hip and cozy, soaring and intimate. The austere décor is offset by an enormous mural awash in the electric green hues of a spring meadow. It’s a scene that should unfold outside the multipaned windows any week now.