View No. 7: Philipse Manor Hall, Yonkers

Watercolor on Linen / 14“ X 20”

At the start of day three, Hudson approached the Village of Napekamak on the Nepperhan River, now called Yonkers and the Saw Mill River. Where an Indian village had been a young Dutch lawyer, Adriaen Van der Donck built one of the first water-powered mills in the New World and a house. Later owners, Margaret and Frederick Philipse, expanded the house into a Georgian-style mansion, that became the model for a parade of mansions going up the river in the following centuries. Now a museum, Philipse Manor Hall is largely restored and is one of America’s oldest buildings.

In recent years, a section of the formerly polluted and culverted SawMill River that led up to the mill from the Hudson River, was opened up (or daylighted,) and reconfigured within a beautiful new park dedicated to the founder of Yonkers, Adriaen Van der Donck.