The Rockefeller Family Home: Kykuit Hardcover – Illustrated, 20 Dec. 2021

Great Pictures!

Bought this for my husband as he is a Rockefeller fan. Great book!

This is a loving and personal book. The first part of it is 46 pages of the Rockefeller family's personal history with Kykuit, including family photographs. Then follows photographs, history and descriptions of the Big House, the outbuildings and the gardens.When I say "gardens", you may think of just a large back yard. But it's nothing of the sort. This is acres of beauty to enjoy, including a Japanese Tea House. . I think my favorite pictures from the book are of the gardens in winter, with dustings of snow on the hedges and sculptures looking cold.John D. Rockefeller started business in Cleveland, OH, but as Standard Oil got bigger, he started spending so much time in NYC that he bought land for a family retreat at Pocantico Hills, NY, overlooking the Hudson River. It became Kykuit, Dutch for "lookout", largely finished by 1913. By then, JDR had already retired from Standard Oil, and he lived at Kykuit for the last 40 years of his life.The last Rockefellers to live in the Big House were Nelson and Happy Rockefeller. When Nelson died in 1979, he willed his portion of Kykuit to the National Trust (long discussed as a family). It took several years to settle the transfer. In the meanwhile, Ann Rockefeller Roberts and Mary Louise Pierson, Nelson's daughter and granddaughter, wanted to memorialize the estate where the family had spent so many happy times. Ann wrote this book's text and Mary Louise took the photographs.I counted 6 two-page photo spreads, 35 near full-page photos and 236 smaller photos, many close-ups of architectural or garden details. What Mary Louise's pictures show is that though this was a very large and very nice house, it was definitely a family home. It wasn't cold and grand, it was a place to live in. I thought that most of the interior photographs suffer from lack of light. Mary Louise is a professional photographer, but if she had brought in portable lighting for her interior shots, they would have been more crisp.All in all, an enjoyable book.Happy Reader

just ok, nothing special

Pretty good, but having read Ron Chernow's biography, would have liked to have seen a sketch of the original park with roads, streams, lakes and all buildings.

As advertised.