I’d passed this house many times before. It’s between Briarcliff Manor and Pleasantville and you can barely see it from the road. I didn’t know much about it and was unable to discover much when I tried.

We (the Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society) did discover that it’s called “The Manor House” and it’s in the typical Tudor revival style that you find all over Briarcliff Manor. It was built in 1925 by Oscar Vatet for Rev. Dr. Rufus P. Johnston (pastor of John D. Rockefeller’s Fifth Avenue Baptist Church). The building later became home to Dr. Arthur O’Connor; then to Cognitronics, and later to Frank B. Hall, Inc. It is an empty and unused part of Briarcliff Corporate Campus. We also found out that it stands where the School of Practical Agriculture and Horticulture (later the Pocantico Lodge, and the Miss Knox School) once stood.

There’s a local legend that Rockefeller paid for the house, but we haven’t found any evidence that that’s the case.

Taken with a Sony RX100 III