The Greyston Gatehouse is a significant surviving component of the William E. and Sarah T. Hoadley Dodge, Jr., Estate, known as Greyston, located in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. A grey granite villa, Greyston was built in 1863-64 to the design of preeminent architect James Renwick, Jr., and his long-time partner, Joseph Sands. It is one of the city’s finest examples of a villa in the Gothic Revival style of the mid-19th century and is a designated New York City Landmark. The Greyston Gatehouse, built c. 1863-68, is a premier example in New York of the picturesque rural cottage style popularized by architectural theoreticians such as Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux, though the design is undoubtedly by Renwick & Sands. The one-and-ahalf-story frame building is irregularly massed, clad in clapboards in the first story and board-andbatten above, and features cusped vergeboards accenting the jerkinhead roofs, which are covered with polychrome slate shingles. Dramatically sited on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, Riverdale first developed in 1853 as the earliest planned railroad suburb within today’s New York City, following the completion of the Hudson River Railroad, and the area became a favored summer retreat with villas for wealthy New Yorkers.
The Neighborhood
The Bronx
The only borough contiguous with the mainland of the United States, the Bronx was named for Jonas Bronck who established a settlement in the area in 1639. The Bronx’s main thoroughfare, the Grand Concourse, was conceived as part of the City Beautiful movement. It was...
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