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To remove the nuisance of a New York Central suburban railroad which now runs past his Pocantico Hills estate, John D. Rockefeller Jr. (whose sole purpose in life is to perpetuate his father's "intentions") bought the entire village of East View. To habitants, some of whose families have lived there since Colonial times, he paid three to four times the assessed value of their properties, a total of $825,000. Last week the villagers were moving away and wreckers stood ready to demolish the place.
The Rockefeller intention is to divert the suburban railroad through the East View site and away from the estate fence. For that they have offered the New York Central $800,000. But the Rockefeller will in this case has not moved uncontested. Last week householders of Pocantico Hills and adjoining Tarrytown Heights, who do not work on the Rockefeller estate, bitterly complained to New York's Public Service Commission, who must approve the track removal, that they would have to walk to the new station. One oldster's plaint was that he would sorely miss "the tooting of the whistles and the sound of the engines on the old line." Despite objections it can be stated that the tracks will be moved.
This most famed of U. S. estates was open with few restrictions to visitors until 1913, when ruffians attempted to invade it as a demonstration against the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.'s (a Rockefeller property; killings of miners. Since then dour guards command the two open gates (there are six all told) of the fenced-in part of the property.
Within this portion is the home, a three-story, high-gabled brick affair which John D. Rockefeller himself designed. It stands on a hill called Kyk-Uit, overlooking the Hudson River.
Nearby is the much larger $500,000 play-&-study house of John D. Rockefeller's children. It contains a swimming pool, gymnasium, handball court, dining room, billiard room, bowling alleys, study rooms. Tapestries, paintings and etchings soften the walls. It is the pride of the entire family.
The grounds John D. Rockefeller also laid out for himself. The country all about Pocantico Hills is wooded, hilly and full of waterways. Most of the 8,000 acres which comprise the estate have been little touched or fenced. Students of the many private schools in the neighborhood and the local householders ride through the woods at their pleasure—until they come to the spiked iron fence of the reserved section.
Those especially private grounds Mr. Rockefeller has parked expertly. There are wide rolling lawns, a nine-hole golf course, terraced and sunken gardens. Where his fancy has promised him pleasure he has moved watercourses, built ponds with dams and created watercourses. Throughout this park are the motor roads he has engineered himself. And those provide him especial delight. For swift motoring is one of the chief of the many things that he has found to give him pleasure during this last third of a long life.