The Locust Avenue

The Locust Avenue. . Overlooking the Hudson River, this grassy strip paralleling the historic site's main parking lot was laid out as a road in the 18th century by Chancellor Robert R. Livingston. Meandering through the beautiful, irregularly planted locust trees for which it was named, the road once connected the Clermont mansion with the Chancellor's 1793 "Arryl House,” now a ruin., Writing about Clermont in the 1840s, the noted landscape architect A. J. Downing said, "the long vistas of planted avenues, added to its fine water view, rendered this a noble place. The finest locusts in America are now standing in the pleasure-grounds here.” Chancellor Livingston's property was well-known for the unusual character, variety, and extent of its trees and gardens., Upper Right Drawing: This ca. 1807 sketch shows the view south from Clermont. Arryl House's grassy lawn is in the foreground, and the Locust Avenue to the far right. From the Lodet sketchbook, courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library., Lower Right Photo: The Locust Avenue appears to the left of the Clermont mansion in this photograph. Beside you, the parking lot covers what was once a grassy meadow between Clermont and Arryl House. Maintained by generations of Livingstons, the trees have been replaced periodically over the years as they have died naturally or been taken by storms., Lower Left Drawing: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, a Polish traveler, wrote in 1798: “... an alley of high locusts or acacias leads to a view of the whole course of the Hudson River...The alley of acacia trees leads to the house of the Chancellor's mother, which is completely surrounded by the finest fruit trees." - From Benson J. Lossing's The Book of the Hudson, 1866.