Sunnyside: A living memorial to Washington Irving, father of American literature

Sunnyside, home of the recently deceased Washington Irving, is pictured in a Currier & Ives illustration published in 1860. (New York Public Library)

"Sunnyside," on the east bank of the Hudson River just north of West Sunnyside Lane, later the boundary between the lower Hudson Valley villages of Irvington and Tarrytown, was home to Irvington’s namesake, one of the first and greatest American writers, Washington Irving.

Irving was the 11th and youngest child born to immigrant parents William and Sarah Irving who married in 1761 and emigrated to British colonial New York. William was born in Scotland, Sarah in Cornwall, England.

The young Irving was born on April 3, 1783 while negotiations were underway for the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution and won independence for the fledgling United States of America. His parents named him in honor of Continental Army commander General George Washington.

Irving met the newly minted President Washington at age 6 in 1789 in the new, temporary U.S. Capital, New York. It was an event that was to become well known throughout the nation.

Irving’s nephew, Pierre M. Irving, who wrote his uncle's posthumous "The Life and Letters of Washington Irving" in 1859, gave this account of the meeting:

“A young Scotch maid-servant of the family, struck with the enthusiasm which everywhere greeted (the president’s) arrival, determined to present the child to his distinguished namesake.

“Accordingly, she followed (President Washington) one morning into a shop, and pointing to the lad who had scarcely outgrown his virgin trousers: ‘Please your honor,’ said she, ‘here’s a bairn (child) was named after you.’

“In the estimation of Lizzie, for so she was called, few claims of kindred could be stronger than this. Washington did not disdain the delicate affinity, and placing his hand on the head of her little charge, gave him his blessing.”

An 1854 watercolor by George Bernard Butler Jr. commemorates the event and hangs at Sunnyside today.

Irving got his first taste of Hudson Valley life at age 14. A deadly yellow fever epidemic gripped Manhattan and Irving traveled to what would become Tarrytown and the childhood estate of future author and U.S. Secretary of the Navy James Kirke Paulding. Irving's older brother, William, had married Paulding's sister. Paulding was five years older than Irving.

The visit began a lasting love affair between Irving and the area, although the relationship would not be consummated until Irving bought Sunnyside in 1835 at age 52 from Benson Ferris, heir through marriage to the 150-acre farm of Philipsburg Manor tenant farmer Wolfert Acker, whose surname was also commonly spelled Ecker, Eckar and Eckert.

Some say the original small farmhouse was built as early as 1650, but others believe it was built by Acker after his 1689 marriage. The original house -- by then in possession of Acker in-law Jacob Van Tassel -- was burned by the British during the Revolutionary War, apparently because of Patriot activity at the home during the war.

The estate would be called “Wolfert’s Roost” by Irving who later changed the name to Sunnyside in 1842. The estate is now in the Village of Tarrytown but was originally considered to be part of Irvington. Tarrytown absorbed all the so-called Irvington estates north of east and west Sunnyside lanes when it incorporated in 1870, two years before Irvington did.

Ironically, Irvington was named in honor of Irving but his estate wound up in Tarrytown. But Irving never actually lived in Tarrytown. The village in which he lived was named Dearman when carved out of former Philipsburg Manor farmland in 1850, but had its name changed to Irvington in 1854 at the prompting of Gilded Age estate owners and Irving friends and business partners George D. Morgan and Moses H. Grinnell.

This oil-on-canvas painting “Washington Irving and his Literary Friends at Sunnyside,” by Christian Schussele, 1864, shows (from left) Henry T. Tuckerman (1813-1871), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), William H. Prescott (1796-1859), Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860), Ralph Waldo Emerson  (1803-1882), William Cullen Bryan (1794-1878), John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870), James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), and George Bancroft (1800-1891). (Wikimedia Commons)

Irving opposed the War of 1812 against the British until British forces burned Washington, D.C., in 1814. He enlisted and served in the New York militia at that time and quite possibly met an officer whose name would become legend in one of Irving's most celebrated stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The officer was Colonel Ichabod B. Crane. The war decimated the Irving family’s merchant fortunes in England and Irving left the U.S. for Britain in 1815. He would eventually declare bankruptcy and not return to the U.S. until 1832.

While gone, he built on a literary career that had begun in New York. In Great Britain, he wrote arguably his two most famous works, the short stories “Rip Van Winkle” in 1819 and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820.

He continued writing, becoming the first well-known American author in Europe before finally returning to the U.S. and traveling and writing extensively about the west. But a European return loomed. President John Tyler named him Ambassador to the Court of Isabella II of Spain in 1842 and he served in that post through the second year of President James K. Polk’s administration in 1846.

Irving wrote prior to his departure for Spain: "It will be a severe trial to absent myself for a time from my dear little Sunnyside, but I shall return to it better enabled to carry it on comfortably.”

Washington Irving’s study at “Sunnyside,” pictured as it would have appeared ca. 1840, would have been the site of the writing of his five-volume biography of namesake George Washington, "The Life of George Washington," published between 1855 and 1859. (Library of Congress)

Back at Sunnyside, Irving began researching and writing a five-volume biography of his namesake, George Washington, "The Life of George Washington." He traveled frequently between Sunnyside, Washington, D.C., and Washington’s former Mount Vernon, Va., plantation. The biography would be published between 1855 and 1859, the last volume published months before Irving’s death in his Sunnyside bedroom of a heart attack on Nov. 28, 1859 at age 76.

Before Irving died, author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said Sunnyside had become "next to Mount Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our land."

Irving was buried at Sleepy Hollow cemetery on Dec. 1, 1859. He and his final resting place were remembered by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 17 years later in Longfellow’s poem "In The Churchyard at Tarrytown." It reads:

Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame!
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting-place beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multiplied.
How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.

In a letter to his brother Peter, Irving described Sunnyside as "a beautiful spot, capable of being made a little paradise ... I have had an architect up there, and shall build upon the old mansion this summer. My idea is to make a little nookery somewhat in the Dutch style, quaint, but unpretending. It will be of stone."

Washington Irving’s Sunnyside is pictured in 1903. (Library of Congress, copyright 1903 by the Detroit Photographic Co.)

Irving asked his friend and neighbor, English-born painter George Harvey, to collaborate in the house's remodeling and enlargement and the landscaping of the grounds, which included creating a pond Irving called "The Little Mediterranean," with a waterfall that led to a babbling brook.

In 1847, after returning from Spain, Irving added the "Spanish Tower" to Sunnyside influenced by the Alhambra palace in Granada, Andalusia, Spain in which he had lived. The addition included four bedrooms.

Sunnyside and its 10 remaining acres remained home to Irving descendants until 1945 when it was purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. who restored it and opened it to the public in 1947. The estate was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and is operated today as a museum by Historic Hudson Valley.

The museum includes a large collection of Irving's own furnishings and accessories. All furniture and most accessories in his writer's study are original.

* Click here for photos and other illustrations from Washington Irving's life and career courtesy New York Public Library

* Washington Irving's "Old Christmas, From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving, Illustrated by Randolph Caldecott" had a huge impact on bringing to life Christmas and Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) as we know them today. It was originally published in 1819 and 1820 as parts of a collection of short stories, and in 1876 as a standalone illustrated book. Click here for free online access to the text and illustrations of the book

* Click here for links to dozens of other Gilded Age stories by this author