The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth-Century America - Paperback

by Robert F. Dalzell Jr. (Author), Lee Baldwin Dalzell (Author)

The Dalzells . . . do an astonishing job of placing Kykuit in historical context while weaving the larger-than-life Rockefeller personalities into its very walls and hallways.--Los Angeles Times

One hundred years ago America's richest man established a dynastic seat, the granite-clad Kykuit, high above the Hudson River. John D. Rockefeller, who detested ostentation, had something simple in mind--at least until his son John Jr. and his charming wife, Abby, injected classical taste and a spirit of noblesse oblige into the equation. Built to honor the senior Rockefeller, the house would also become the place above all others that anchored the family's memories and sense of itself.

With memorable skill and insight, the authors take us inside the house and the family to observe how each new generation, often sharply at odds with one another, left its distinctive mark on the place.

Author Biography

Robert F. Dalzell is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College, and is the author of Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made and Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism.

Lee Baldwin Dalzell was for many years the head of the Reference Department at the Williams College Library. The two collaborated on George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America.