Westchester’s Residential Architecture Span Centuries and Styles

From Dutch Colonial to McMansions and the hundreds of years in between, there’s an architectural diversity in Westchester that’s hard to find anywhere else.

Sure, when you think about Westchester’s houses, you think of Tudors, Colonials, and raised ranches. What sets us apart from the rest of the country is that, if you look past the typical stock and really examine your surroundings, you can actually trace the entire history of the country’s architecture—starting before there even was a country—through houses that still survive here. “Residential architecture here started in the Dutch Colonial period—and they just kept building and building,” says John Milnes Baker, AIA, author of American House Styles: A Concise Guide. (Baker’s own house, Rivendell in Northern Westchester, was deemed important enough to be included in a coloring book by A.G. Smith.) “It just flourished, and you can still find wonderful examples of almost every style of architecture in the area.” Here, a sampling of periods included in American House Styles, and where you can find a house in each style still standing in the County and its environs. Note that many of our local architectural offerings pre-date the years that those styles became popular—we always were the trendsetters.

The History of Residential Architecture as Seen in Westchester		–>		–>
	Dutch Colonial (1625-1800) The Manor House at Philipsburg Manor 1680-1720 Sleepy Hollow		Georgian (1715-1780) Philipse Manor Hall 1680s-1750s Yonkers		Federal (1780-1820) Boscobel House and Gardens 1804-1808 Garrison, NY
		–>		–>
	Gothic Revival (1840-1860) Lyndhurst (1838) Tarrytown		Picturesque (1840-1900) Washington Irving’s Sunnyside (1835) Irvington		Exotic Eclectic (1850-1875) Armour-Stiner House aka the Octagon House (1860-1872) Irvington
		–>		–>
	Renaissance Revival (1890-1930) Estherwood (1894) Dobbs Ferry		Beaux-Arts (1890-1930) Kykuit (1913) Pocantico Hills		Modern (1920-1960) Roland Reisley House (1951) Pleasantville
		–>
	International (1930-1990s) Richard H. Mandel House (1935) Bedford Hills		McMansions All Over Everywhere

Philipsburg Manor Photo by Bryan Haeffele; Estherwood Photo by Daniel Case; Armour-Stiner house image courtesy of Joseph Pell Lombardi Architect; Sunnyside photo by Karen M. Sharman; Kykuit Photo by Mick Hales; Roland Reisley House photo courtesy of Roland Reisley and Usonia, New York- Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright, by Roland Reisley & John Timpane – Princeton Architectural Press, 2001