History

Midwood once was part of Robert Livingston’s 160,000-acre estate. His son built the nearby Clermont mansion (still standing and open for tours).  

Grandson Robert R. Livingston and four others (one was Thomas Jefferson) wrote the Declaration of Independence. Livingston’s fame was such that during the Revolutionary War the British attacked Clermont as a warning not to fight the King. Later he administered the oath of office to George Washington.

Over time Livingston descendants settled nearby and built houses, among them Midwood, built by Robert Livingston Clarkson in 1885 as a rural retreat. Midwood blends then-fashionable Colonial Revival and Second Empire styles. Several generations of Clarksons lived there. Many ventures began there – one being Robert Fulton’s new-fangled steamboat (named the “Clermont”); another was a coal distribution business (at low tide you can still see pilings from the old landing pier). 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt both knew Midwood. FDR grew up in Hyde Park, a few miles away; Eleanor lived just north of Midwood. Before their 1905 marriage FDR would ride on a carriage road behind the Big House that remains in use today.

Joan K. Davidson bought Midwood in 1985. She was a philanthropist, preservationist, and civic leader.  As a young woman Davidson worked for Senator Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington, D.C., then married and had four children. Longtime president of the influential J.M. Kaplan Fund, she chaired the New York State Council on the Arts and in the 1990s Governor Mario M. Cuomo named her Commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. She died in 2023. 

To this day Midwood remains a shining example of how elite Hudson River families lived in the Gilded Age. Her descendants still gather there year-round.