Few people today have ever heard of him, but in the early years of the twentieth century, Samuel Untermyer took on the rich, the entrenched establishment, the robber barons, and the most powerful corporations in America. He also turned his estate into one of the most extensive and ambitious gardens of the Gilded Age. Located on the banks of the Hudson, it boasted extravagant structures based on Greek models, 60 greenhouses, and a staff of 60 gardeners. After Untermyer's death, the garden went into a steep decline, until the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy began a program of restoration that has brought a significant part of the original gardens back to their former glory. Visitors today can experience the grandeur of the garden, and the renovations continue. In Paradise on the Hudson, seasoned writer and garden historian Caroline Seebohm shares all this and more, telling a fascinating story of a dazzling Gilded Age garden created, lost, and re-found. Packed with contemporary and historical photography, this must-read entry into the canon of garden history celebrates an important garden in its former glory and in its current restoration.
