Merestead | Photo courtesy of Westchester County Parks
The beloved architectural treasures at Lyndhurst, Merestead, and Wightman Mansion at Lenoir Preserve receive extensive restorations.
If it’s been a while since you’ve visited Lyndhurst, Merestead, or Wightman Mansion at Lenoir Preserve, you may be surprised next time you drop by. These Westchester landmarks have been undergoing various overhauls, renovations, and improvements to make them camera-ready for scores of future visitors.
Mount Kisco’s Merestead, a 1906 country mansion listed on the National Register of Historic Properties, is currently receiving a major facelift. Exterior work began in January 2020 to protect the Merestead main dwelling but was paused due to the pandemic. Now resumed, the mansion is receiving a new roof, as well as restored chimneys, windows, doors, railings, terracotta patios, and other elements. Work is also being done to restore and repaint the mansion’s soffit, clean the brick façade, provide new window wells, a new oil tank, and enact a host of other enhancements.
Meanwhile, a Neo-Renaissance gem in Yonkers is also getting some love. Lenoir Preserve’s Wightman Mansion, a 13,000-square-foot stunner built in the mid-1800s (and expanded in the early 1900s), is set to receive a host of much-needed exterior restorations, including work on doors, windows, gutters, soffits, and roof as part of a $5 million capital project. The mansion will also get an upgraded HVAC system, as well as repointing of its stone façade and chimneys.
Finally, Lyndhurst in Tarrytown is undergoing what is perhaps the most expansive restoration of all, which will stretch to at least 2027. The first and second phases are already complete, which entail the overhaul of rockeries, orchards, a kitchen garden, mansion landscaping, a rose garden, and pathways. Currently underway is Phase Three, replanting along the carriage drive, which is to be followed by Phase Four, the restoration of the mansion’s aqueduct and swim-tank landscape. Restoring the mansion’s opulent greenhouse constitutes Phase Five, to be completed soon thereafter.
