We went down to the Frederick Vanderbilt house. A nice little house, not too much bigger than this one. It’s his Spring house I think. Probably double or triple the square footage of this one, maybe more but it isn’t ginormous. However, it had 750 acres and one mile of Hudson river frontage. The owner, Daisy, tried to sell it for $250K in the 30s but no takers so she donated it to the town of Hyde Park or the State of NY. I forget which. We’re more curious now about William Vanderbilt the original owner of this house.

The Mansion, as it is called, still has the one mile of river frontage. That’s very nice. I wish we had that. Plus it has a great creek, which we have. The house was done up like Versaille or Schonbrun. As a matter of fact, I said this to Kim and Voila, the guide said that they loved everything European back then and had the Steinway that they bought in NY shipped to Europe, I assume Italy or France, painted and then shipped back. The place was over the top. Nice curtains though.