Pocantico Hills is an unincorporated hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant, Westchester County, New York, United States, about 28 miles (45 km) north of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It occupies the area of approximately 2.5 square miles (6.5 km2). While official data and wider definitions vary, longtime residents consider only the houses immediately surrounding the historical Rockefeller family estate (anchored by Kykuit, the family seat built by John D.
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284 m
Union Church of Pocantico Hills is a historic, nondenominational church in Pocantico Hills, New York. It is a notable example of an NRHP-listed church building, whose modern artistic contributions are central to its historic status.
Construction of the church was funded primarily by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1921, as part of his plans to develop the community of Pocantico Hills, which was below the Rockefeller family estate, Kykuit. His father, John D. Rockefeller Sr., donated the land. Prominent advertising entrepreneur Barron Collier, owner of a neighboring estate, also contributed to the building of the church.
Upon the death of Rockefeller's wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller in 1948, their son Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Henri Matisse to design the church's rose window in honor of her memory shortly before the artist's own death in 1954. When John D. Rockefeller Jr. died in 1960, his children commissioned artist Marc Chagall to design a Good Samaritan window in his honor. It is a one-story neo-Gothic style building with fieldstone foundation and walls and a slate covered, highly pitched gable roof. In 1930–1931, a parish hall was added to the east end of the church.
On May 6, 2006, the church was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The church offers weekly, nondenominational Sunday services in the Christian tradition, open to the public, at 10:00 am ET. For more information about the services, choir, and Sunday school, see the official Website, Union Church of Pocantico Hills.
458 m
The Marcel Breuer House at Pocantico is a wood-frame modernist-style house at the Pocantico estate in Pocantico Hills, New York, United States. It was designed by Marcel Breuer as part of the 1949 "House in the Museum Garden" exhibit at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, curated by Philip Johnson, MoMA's director. The museum had made plans to exhibit a modernist house in its garden in 1948, to be designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but design of the exhibit was instead awarded to Breuer. The exhibit opened in April 1949 and received 80,000 visitors over six months, becoming one of MoMA's most popular exhibits to date. After the MoMA exhibition ended, House in the Museum Garden was disassembled and taken to Pocantico, where it was reassembled by the Rockefeller family in 1950.
The design was intended to be constructed in two phases: the first phase consisted of two bedrooms for a family with young children, and additional rooms could be built as the children grew. The facade uses cypress board, with plate glass windows, and a roof with a V-shaped cross-section. Stone seating areas and standalone louvers partition the open space outside the house into several zones. Inside are stone floors that conceal a radiant heating system, along with wooden floors and ceilings. As designed, the bedrooms are placed at either end of the building, while communal areas such as living and dining rooms are situated centrally. One side of the house has a mezzanine. Closets and storage space are placed throughout the interior, and when the exhibit was displayed at MoMA, it was fully outfitted with interiors and furnishings designed mostly by Breuer. The Marcel Breuer House at Pocantico's design received mixed commentary from art and architecture critics, but its popularity helped increase public awareness of Breuer's designs.
762 m
The New Croton Aqueduct is an aqueduct in the New York City water supply system, carrying the waters of the Croton Watershed from the New Croton Dam in Westchester County, New York, to the Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx. Built roughly parallel to the Old Croton Aqueduct which it originally augmented, the new aqueduct opened in 1890. The old aqueduct remained in service until 1955, when supply from the Delaware and Catskill Aqueducts was sufficient to allow taking it off line.
Croton Watershed waters continue from the Jerome Park Reservoir to the Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park for treatment, then out to distribution.
900 m
Kykuit, known also as the John D. Rockefeller Estate, is a 40-room historic house museum in Pocantico Hills, a hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant, New York, 25 miles north of New York City. The house was built for oil tycoon and Rockefeller family patriarch John D. Rockefeller. Conceived largely by his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and enriched by the art collection of the third-generation scion, Governor of New York, and Vice President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, it was home to four generations of the family. The house is a National Historic Landmark owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and tours are given by Historic Hudson Valley.
Kykuit is situated on the highest point in Pocantico Hills, overlooking the Hudson River at Tappan Zee. Located near Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, it has a view of the New York City skyline 25 miles to the south.
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Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture is a non-profit farm as well as an agricultural education and research center located in Pocantico Hills, New York. The center was created on 80 acres formerly belonging to Pocantico, the Rockefeller estate. It is surrounded on three sides by the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. Stone Barns promotes sustainable agriculture, local food, and community-supported agriculture. It is a four-season operation.
Stone Barns Center is also home to the Barber family's Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant that serves contemporary cuisine using local ingredients, with an emphasis on produce from the center's farm. Blue Hill staff also participate in the center's education programs.
Rockefeller Sr.) to be the true Pocantico Hills. The district served by the Pocantico Hills Fire Department contains 270 households (as of 2025). The hamlet is almost completely surrounded by the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. It shares the postal code, 10591, with the nearby villages of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown.