Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park
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Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park is located on the east bank of the Connetquot River, in Long Island's Suffolk County, New York, USA near the village of Great River. The extensive landscape garden is in the nature of an estate arboretum, laid out starting in 1887 for William Bayard Cutting (1850 - 1912) by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, and given to the people of Long Island by his widow and daughter "to provide an oasis of beauty and quiet for the pleasure, rest, and refreshment of those who delight in outdoor beauty; and to bring about a greater appreciation and understanding of the value and importance of informal planting." Charles Sprague Sargent, director of the Arnold Arboretum advised in developing the extensive conifer collection north of the carriage house. Some of the most mature planting was badly damaged in Hurricane Gloria in 1985.
"Westbrook", the large rambling house of many gables and tall chimneys, in the Tudor style, architect Charles C. Haight (1886), is also open to the public. Scottish heather was shipped to provide thatch for the gate lodge, which remains at the corner of Montauk Highway and Great River Road— a practice that was interrupted by World War I. In 1895 Mr. Cutting and his brother laid out a golf course at Westbrook, believed to be the first private golf course in the United States.
When a fire in 1895 burned down many of the farm buildings, Stanford White was commissioned to draw the plans for a modern dairy with many innovative features, known as Westbrook Farms.
William Bayard Cutting's grandfather, Robert Cutting, was Robert Fulton's partner in the ferry from Brooklyn to New York; they married Livingston sisters. Cutting was a West India merchant who developed railroad interests; his son was a pioneer in refining sugar from sugar beets.
List of Activities and Services
Food, Gift shop, Nature trail, Recreation programs.
External links
- Bayard Cutting arboretum (http://nysparks.state.ny.us/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/nysparks/parks.cgi?p+110)
- Estate history (http://www.eastislip.org/bayard_cutting.htm)