The last installment of my slightly spooky 25th anniversary travel blog ends at the beginning; Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow in New York State. First of all, the area can be a confusing traverse through the northern environs of upper New York City if you are not careful. Secondly, the search leads the tourist through communities seemingly designed to confuse and befuddle: Irvington, Sunnyside, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow might as well be one and the same. Thirdly, those 17th century Dutchmen who first claimed, then settled the area must have been crazy or paranoid or both.
Known originally as “New Netherland,” Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow was a 17th-century Dutch colonial province located on the East Coast areas that now make up the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The colony was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. The inhabitants of New Netherland were Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans, the latter chiefly imported as slaves. Descendants of the original settlers played a prominent role in colonial America for the next two centuries. The ghostly visages of long dead Dutchmen permeate the region to this day.
One of those long dead Dutchmen is a hero of mine: Washington Irving. I can’t resist the opportunity to share among friends why Washington Irving matters. Irving was the first American literary diarist who wrote for pleasure at a time when writing was reserved for informational, instructional, spiritual or useful purposes only. He was the first American literary humorist. He was the first American writer of modern short stories. He was the first to write history and biography as entertainment. He was the first to use nonfiction prose as a literary genre. He was the first to introduce the American Gothic style of literature to a wide audience, inspiring Gothic masters from Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King and Anne Rice. In short, Washington Irving was the bomb.
As someone who has written, admired and talked about Washington Irving pretty extensively, I find it hard to explain the feeling of euphoria I felt as I slowly drove past the sign welcoming me to Sleepy Hollow. Or was it Irvington? Wait, it was Sunnyside. Did I mention it was confusing? Regardless, I made it to the author’s home on the banks of the Hudson River and immediately fell in love. An ancient gently curved path leads down a timeless landscaped slope ending at the Hudson River and Irving’s estate known as “Sunnyside.”
When you gaze upon Sunnyside for the first time you understand where artist Thomas Kincaide got his inspiration for all of those cottage paintings. The house seems to have bloomed out of the surrounding soil. The corners and eaves are enveloped by flowering vines and greenery whose roots stretch back in time nearly two centuries. The day of our visit, my wife Rhonda and I were the only two tour guests, met by a brace of lovely women dressed in period costumes of hoop skirts and cameos, each one a specialist on their particular house tour segment.
Our welcoming guide explained how Washington Irving (1783–1859) designed Sunnyside and its 10 acre grounds himself, collaborating with his neighbor, the artist George Harvey. “It is a beautiful spot,” Irving wrote, “capable of being made a little paradise.” In 1832, Washington Irving visited his nephew Oscar Irving who lived near the old stone farmhouse. Irving had recently returned from a trip to the Arkansas River and Mississippi River. The frontier lifestyle appealed to him and he wanted to carve out his own slice of wild along the mighty Hudson River. Irving had lived most of his adult life as a guest in other people’s homes and was eager for a home of his own and he was “willing to pay a little unreasonably for it.” Irving purchased the property on June 7, 1835 for $1,800; he would add to the property to expand the estate through the years.
I would advance a much less romantic explanation as to why Irving fled the city he himself nicknamed “Gotham” for the quiet isolation of Sunnyside: a cholera epidemic was sweeping the city. People of means were escaping to the country en masse. By July of 1832, according to the New York Evening Post, “The roads, in all directions, were lined with well-filled stagecoaches, livery coaches, private vehicles and equestrians, all panic-struck, fleeing the city, as we may suppose the inhabitants of Pompeii fled when the red lava showered down upon their houses.” Washington Irving was no dummy.
But Sunnyside did not begin with Washington Irving. It began almost 200 years before with Wolfert Eckert, a Dutch-American inhabitant of the region. His property, “Wolfert’s Roost” was built around 1690 as part of the Manor of Philipsburg; among other buildings, it contained a simple two-room stone tenant farmhouse. The property remained in the Eckert family until Irving purchased it in 1835. He immediately began expanding the small cottage in stages, combining his sentimental interests in the architecture of colonial New York and buildings he had visited in Scotland and Spain. In time, the house became a three-dimensional autobiography.
The grounds read like a book, reflecting Irving’s romantic view of art, nature, and history. He arranged garden paths, trees and shrubs, vistas, and water features to enable his home to appear as natural as the rolling landscape surrounding it. Irving’s Sunnyside estate was the most talked about home and desired invitation in Antebellum America, more coveted than contemporaries like the White House, Mt. Vernon or Monticello. The author’s contemporaries extensively described and illustrated Sunnyside during his lifetime. No less a worldwide literary personage than Charles Dickens himself based his 1842 visit to America around his desire to meet his hero Washington Irving.
Since Sunnyside and many of its furnishings remained in the family for generations after the author’s death, a visit here is one of the most authentic experiences of mid-19th century life to be found anywhere in the country. Once inside, we were immediately taken into the great man’s study. It remains much the same today as Irving would have known it. Guests are surrounded by Irving’s personal library, his partner’s desk and chair and dozens of personal items that make it easy to imagine what it was like when Irving was working there. The guide explained that many other items are housed nearby and discoveries are still being made. Recently, a conservator was working on one of Irving’s books when a handwritten letter fell out quite unexpectedly. The letter was written to Irving from an admirer named Edgar Allan Poe. “Poe was a fan of Mr. Irving’s,” our guide explained. “But later Poe became an adversary of Irving for reasons unknown.”
In the rear of the office behind a pair of canopy drapes is a daybed comfortably attired beneath a landscape of books that stretch heavenward. Yes, indeed, Rip Van Winkle himself would’ve been pleased by this sleeping arrangement. The long, wide bench is adorned with thick cushions running the length of the wall and the two velvet curtains could be closed for privacy. This area was designed for him to take a break from writing and to take a nap, but it became his permanent nightly sleeping quarters. If someone came calling, Irving could go out the door in the enclosed area and come down the hallway. The visitor would have no idea that Mr. Irving had been caught napping in his office.
On the nightstand near the bed rests Washington Irving’s personal homeopathic medical chest. Looking not unlike an oaken toolbox, it is filled with small vials containing natural remedies for common maladies of the Victorian era. It seems that along with being our nation’s first fantasist to earn his living solely with a pen, Irving was also among our first to utilize holistic medicine. This was the pedestal upon which the great man died on November 28, 1859. Just before retiring for the night, the author said: “Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! If this could only end!” It should come as no surprise to my readers to learn that this room is purportedly haunted by the author. I could lead you on a room-by-room tour of the rest of the house, but to be honest, you need go no further than his office.
Although the rest of the house may have been forgettable to me, the trivia about my hero was captivating. According to legend, George Washington met 5-year-old Washington Irving in 1789 while shopping with his nanny. The woman introduced the lad to General Washington with “This bairn that’s called after ye!” and Washington gave his blessing to his namesake by ceremoniously placing his hand upon the young boy’s head in approval. Irving never forgot the moment. In the years to come he would write one of his greatest works, The Life of George Washington, at Sunnyside. A replica of the house stands at Liberty Square at The Walt Disney World; the building serving as a restaurant.
After the tour, we were invited to walk freely about the grounds. From icehouse to outhouse to wood shed, the estate is a faithful representation of the bucolic retreat as it appeared in his lifetime. I was even afforded the opportunity to pick, and devour, an apple from orchard behind the house. However, there is one aspect of the estate that is undeniable to every visitor to Sunnyside. It’s presence smacks of modernism in conflict with the peaceful, timeless beauty of the surrounding waterfront countryside — a railroad. And Washington Irving, the most famous American author of his age, was powerless to stop it.
While about halfway through the numerous repairs, additions, and renovations to his riverfront paradise, the Hudson River Railroad formed in 1847 and began the process of eminent domain against Irving’s Sunnyside. in 1851, the railroad created land between Irving’s sandy Hudson Riverside beach (which the author had painstakingly installed a short time before) by building a berm with landfill, laying down tracks, and starting to run trains from New York City to Albany. Soon, massive iron horses belching thick black coal dust rumbled through the estate at the pace of several times per hour. Irving was furious, of course, fuming that they’d build a railroad through heaven if they could. The “iron horse” of Irving’s era has today been replaced by less interesting engines of the Hudson Line known as the “Metronorth” and the riverside further marred by the erector set style iron towers and power lines that motivate them. These trains rumble noisily past the estate several times per hour.
When the line was first put into use, the train would stop to let Irving board or debark, and when passing would blow the whistle in acknowledgment of the famous author’s house. The relatively meager stipend the author received for the forced easement allowed him to construct a cottage addition know as the Spanish Tower, influenced by the Spanish monastic architecture he witnessed in his travels and later wrote about extensively. It added four bedrooms to the house. Despite the hourly distraction, Irving managed to continue writing and entertaining at Sunnyside. But it just goes to show you that even though you’re a 19th century rock star, you still can’t fight city hall.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night: Stories from the Weekly View.” published in 2014. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
