Cultural Landscape Report for the Mansion Grounds, Vols I, II, and III, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP

Auwaerter, John; Curry, George

The Mansion grounds were historically the domestic component of the much larger Billings Estate. First defined as a domestic landscape in the 1869 plan by Robert Morris Copeland, they were subsequently defined as a distinct landscape within the larger estate in surveys of the estate made in the 1880s. Although Frederick Billings devoted much of the hill within the Mansion grounds to his reforestation program, this landscape also served domestic-related functions, evident through vegetable and rustic woodland gardens. Subsequent generations of Billings, including the Rockefellers, continued to use the landscape for the same purposes. In its earlier history as part of the Marsh Place, only a small portion of the Mansion grounds served domestic purposes. Much of the land was devoted to pasture. This Site History is organized into seven chapters defined by patterns of ownership and land use. Each chapter opens with a general discussion of the historic contexts that influenced the development of the Mansion grounds, such as national trends in landscape design and conservation. Following this general discussion is an overview of the estate’s history during the period, and then a detailed discussion of the development of the Mansion grounds landscape, generally organized by chronology and physical location. Research for this history focused on the resources of the Billings Family Archives, which are housed in the 1890 Farm House at the Billings Farm & Museum. These archives provided a rich source of information that included historic photographs, family diaries, correspondence, maps, and plans. Also important were the records of the Billings Farm, now in the Billings Farm & Museum Library. The library’s fiscal receipts, diaries, and correspondence from the farm provided detailed information about the Mansion grounds, since it was part of the same estate and the farm staff were often involved in the upkeep of its landscape. Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park maintains a database of primary and secondary source material on the Mansion grounds and the Billings family, as well as documentation on existing landscape conditions. Because several nationally-renowned designers worked on the Mansion grounds, repositories holding records of their work were also researched, including Columbia University (papers of Charles A. Platt), Cornell University (papers of Ellen Biddle Shipman), Morris County Park Commission (papers of Martha Brookes Brown Hutcheson), New York Botanical Garden (records of Lord & Burnham Co.), North American Rock Garden Society (information on Zenon Schreiber), and the Peabody Essex Museum (papers of Robert Morris Copeland), among others. These repositories unfortunately contained no documentation on the Mansion grounds other than what is already held by the Billings Family Archives and the park. Much information, however, was gathered through interviews or correspondence with historians or family of the designers. Documentation on the landscape during the Rockefellers’ tenure between 1954 and 1997 was found in family photographs, plans, and some receipts in the park collection, park planning files, and through interviews with family members and park staff who worked on the grounds. Although Laurance Rockefeller was not personally available for interview, his associates in Woodstock and New York provided information and consulted with him about this report. His and Mary Rockefeller’s personal records that may pertain to the history of the Mansion grounds are in the Rockefeller Family Archives in Tarrytown, New York, but these materials were not available for research at the time of this writing due to archival access rules regarding living members of the family. Because of the limited information available, this period in the estate’s history will benefit from future research, as well as a longer-term perspective.

Cultural Landscape Report for the Mansion Grounds, Vols I, II, and III, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP

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