Wave Hill House
665 West 252nd Street | Riverdale | built 1920
Open on the map5 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1870
Theodore Roosevelt's family rents Wave Hill for the summer
Publisher William Henry Appleton owned Wave Hill from 1866 to 1903 and enlarged the house in the late 1860s. Theodore Roosevelt's family rented it for the summers of 1870 and 1871. Thomas Henry Huxley, the scientist who helped bring Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to wide notice, also visited the house during Appleton's years.
“Theodore Roosevelt's family rented Wave Hill during the summers of 1870 and 1871…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1901
Mark Twain takes a lease on Wave Hill House, keeping it until 1903
Mark Twain took a lease on Wave Hill in 1901 and kept it until 1903. When his lease ended, financier George Walbridge Perkins, a partner of J. P. Morgan, bought the house along with neighboring land that included Glyndor, a house the Harriman family had built in 1888.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1942
Conductor Arturo Toscanini makes his home on the Wave Hill estate
The Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini lived on the Wave Hill estate from 1942 to 1945. Earlier, Perkins had leased the house to Bashford Dean, an ichthyologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who added a stone wing, Armor Hall, as his private museum. From 1950 to 1956 the estate housed leading members of the British delegation to the United Nations.
“Other famous residents of the estate included the conductor Arturo Toscanini (1942–1945)…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1960
The Perkins-Freeman family gives Wave Hill to New York City at Robert Moses' urging
Acting on a suggestion from Robert Moses, the Perkins-Freeman family deeded the estate to the City of New York in 1960. It was known as Perkins Garden until 1987, when Parks Commissioner Henry Stern renamed it Wave Hill. Today the house holds the estate's cafe, which opens onto the Kate French Terrace behind it.
“In 1960, at the suggestion of Robert Moses, the Perkins-Freeman family deeded Wave Hill to the City of New York.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1966
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates Wave Hill House, a fieldstone manor on the Hudson
The commission found that the house blends a Federal-style center, dated to the 1820s, with a mostly Gothic north wing of 1910 built for a museum collection and a south wing of 1932. A Georgian doorway with heavy columns and a broken pediment came in a 20th-century remodeling. Parks Commissioner Thomas Hoving backed the designation, and nobody spoke against it.
“The north wing, designed for a museum collection, is generally Gothic in character.”
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