Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center

The Wave Hill House was built as a mansion in 1843 by William Lewis Morris, a well-known lawyer of his time. Then it was owned by William Henry Appleton between 1866 and 1903, who, during his ownership, extended the home between 1866 and 1869, adding greenhouses and gardens in 1890. The house was famously visited by Thomas Henry Huxley, who, for those who may not know, was the same person who assisted Charles Darwin in publicizing his evolution by natural selection.
The Wave Hill House was also briefly rented by Theodore Roosevelt’s family from 1870 to 1871; later, it was leased by author Mark Twain from 1901 to 1903.
Later, the house changed hands, and this time it was JP Morgan’s partner George Walbridge Perkins that purchased it in 1903, along with the nearby property Glyndor, which was built by the Harriman family. Perkin’s notable addition to the home was an underground building used for recreation constructed in 1910. This underground facility included a bowling alley. However, he also performed landscaping on the site, after which it was leased to Bashford Dean, a famous ichthyologist, who was responsible for building the private museum called Armor Hall.
The Perkins family continued to own the home until 1960, when, at Robert Moses’s suggestion, the family transferred the deed to New York City. It was later added to the roster of the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, and it was called Perkins Garden. However, it was soon renamed Wave Hill by then Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.
As of late in 2005, it was amongst 406 homes in New York City to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The grant was mainly made possible by then-mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Today, the Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center is visited by an average of 65,000 visitors annually, which makes it one of New York City’s more popular sites.