National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Resource History and Description of Existing Conditions
Changes to the property resulting from the new wartime priorities included the removal
of the iron palisade fence from the top of the stone wall along Albany Post Road. This yielded
over fifty thousand pounds of metal to a local scrap drive in 1941. Other efforts included the
planting of corn in the lower meadows and the grazing of sheep to keep the grass mown. 1077
Vanderbilt's formal gardens were posted closed to visitors in 1943 due to safety hazards.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM AND TREATMENT DECISIONS
The post-war funding prospects of the National Park Service did not really begin to
improve until the mid-1950s when President Eisenhower authorized the ten year "Mission 66"
program. This program eventually directed one billion dollars toward the upgrade of facilities
and staff in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary of the National Park Service. Typically, these
monies were directed at large capital projects, new facilities, or major rehabilitation rather than
the insidious backlog of deferred maintenance. At Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site,
Mission 66 translated into improvements to roads and parking. This included a doubling in size
of the visitor parking lot that had been initially constructed by the CCC, and the creation of a
small twenty-five car lot and picnic area at Bard Rock. The concrete White Bridge also received
a major rehabilitation at this time. Roads and parking were favored by Mission 66 funding
throughout the country. At Hyde Park, the money ran out when it came to other landscape
structures. During the 1950s the boathouse at Bard Rock was pulled down, as were many of the
formal garden's fences and pergolas. The greenhouses within the garden were all removed
between 1945 and 1955.
In 1976, the "Final" Master Plan prepared at that time by the National Park Service
arbitrarily assigned a restoration period to the historic landscape of 1900-1917. However, work
initiated at this time on the formal gardens was guided by a 1941 planting plan developed by
NPS landscape architects aiming at a cost-effective rehabilitation rather than an accurate garden
restoration. The stipulation of the 1900-1917 treatment date led to the removal of foundation
plantings that were installed at the east face of the mansion at the direction of Cridland in 1923.
The choice of this range of dates for treatment, midway in the Vanderbilt tenure, secondguessed
the intentions of both its last owner Mrs. James Van Alen who saw her donation as a
memorial to her uncle, and President Roosevelt who made his wishes clear that a replacement in
kind approach be taken towards the plantings.
INTEGRITY
Has the National Park Service been fully successful in its charge to preserve the Hyde
Park landscape to portray conditions extant during the Vanderbilt ownership? Did Vanderbilt
himself "preserve the landscape in large part as he found it," as has been asserted in the 1992
CLR? 1078 On thoughtful consideration, most would answer in the negative to both of these
questions. Public visitation and wartime priorities, ongoing budget constraints, and benign and
ill-informed neglect have profoundly altered the landscape. Every owner, private or public,
from Bard to the National Park Service has left their thumbprint here, equipping us with a
1077 O'Donnell, et. al., 218.
1078 "Frederick W. Vanderbilt preserved the landscape in large part as he found it, while replacing every
structure, adding a new house, Pavilion, gate lodges and the White Bridge. Some drives were realigned
and the Great Circle in front of the house created. Vanderbilt also employed four major professionals in
the field of landscape architecture." (O'Donnell, et. al., 345.)
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