Where did John D. Rockefeller grow up and live?

📍200 Lake Road, Pocantico Hills, Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591, USA

1884 – 1937

“Kykuit — the Rockefeller family estate in Sleepy Hollow, New York — was the home I built and lived in for much of my adult life, a stone house on a hill above the Hudson River with views that took in the Palisades on the far bank and the river traffic below. I was born in Richford, New York in 1839 in far more modest circumstances, and the distance between that farmhouse and Kykuit was the distance covered by Standard Oil and the decades of building the largest business fortune in American history. I approached philanthropy with the same systematic rigour I had applied to business, and from Kykuit I directed the giving that funded the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and the General Education Board. The estate was beautiful, but beauty was not why I built it — order was why I built it, and Kykuit was the most ordered place I ever lived.”

👍 LovedThe Hudson River landscape — the beauty of Kykuit's position above the river and the sense of having earned a place in the American landscape. The systematic approach to philanthropy that the estate made possible. The long view that a house on a hill provides.

👎 DislikedThe public hatred that accompanied great wealth in the age of the trusts. The antitrust proceedings that broke up Standard Oil. The difficulty of being simultaneously the most admired and most reviled businessman in America.

Map showing where John D. Rockefeller lived — 200 Lake Road, Pocantico Hills, Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591, USA

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of John D. Rockefeller's home at 200 Lake Road, Pocantico Hills, Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591, USA

📍 Street view today

Sources: Chernow, R. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998), Random House; Rockefeller, J.D. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909), Doubleday; Morris, C. The Tycoons (2005), Times Books