[6] It reflects the tastes of a younger, post-Revolutionary generation of wealthy landowners in the Livingston family who were beginning to be influenced by French trends in home design, moving beyond the strictly English models exemplified by Clermont Manor a short distance up the Hudson River.

[7] Andrew Jackson Downing praised the landscapes of the estate, work he had informally consulted on that was not completed in its final form until almost the mid-20th century.

The southern 70 acres (28 ha) of the estate, which he called the Wilderness and is today known as the South Woods, is the oldest oak forest in the Hudson Valley.

A network of trails and paths connects them and offers both quiet wooded tracts and views of the river and Catskill Mountains.

From there it is short walk through a grove of trees to an open lawn in front of the main house, atop a bluff overlooking the river and the Catskill Escarpment across it in the distance.

[7] The house itself is a two-and-half-story five-by-four-bay building sided in stucco over rubble stone, with two frame wings on the north and south.

A central pier on the east above the main entrance is topped with an urn, flanked by wreathed balustrades, a cornice and frieze with triglyphs and metope-ornamented medallions.

These include the shingle-sided Lodge and its board-and-batten shed, the clapboard-sided Court, a wrought iron greenhouse, and the coach house.

It consists of an 1861 barn along with frame structures like the farm office and storage sheds, along with an octagonal stone reservoir building.

The South Woods, approximately 70 acres (28 ha) in size, is the oldest oak forest in the Hudson Valley.

Archaeological investigations on the property have revealed evidence of Native American use as a seasonal hunting ground at least 5,000 years ago.

With tree samples her friends sent her from many places near and distant, she established a working farm on the property, employing many slaves and freemen.

[7] Edward Livingston had summered there with his wife Louise while he was living in Louisiana, where he had moved after a scandal cost him his jobs as U.S. Attorney for New York and mayor of the city.

In 1844 she hired Alexander Jackson Davis to convert the stately mansion into a more ornate villa, in keeping with the era's emerging Romantic sensibilities.

These were part of their overall intent to make the house and its "pleasure grounds" more separate and distinct from the farming operations, which they also began to reduce in scope.

He and his wife, Violetta White Delafield, made the last major additions to the property by extending the landscaping and adding small gardens to it in the years before World War II.

Eleven years later it was sold for $3 million to Sleepy Hollow Restorations, which later renamed itself Historic Hudson Valley.

Accordingly, their own homes often sat on high ground where they could view their holdings, which in the Livingston family's case included, at that time, portions of the Catskills across the river.

Andrew Jackson Downing of nearby Newburgh championed villa and cottage-style houses in the styles that later came to be known as Carpenter Gothic and Picturesque.

These were smaller structures, generally frame, that were topped by steeply pitched, often cross-gabled, roofs with decorated cornices that were intended to harmonize with surrounding natural features, giving the impression of a comfortable place to live.

Janet's descendants called on Downing's friend Alexander Jackson Davis to expand and renovate the house into a more classically inspired villa over a period of 20 years.

[7] The farmhouse, too, shows Davis's variations on a popular Downing pattern, "Bracketed Cottage with Veranda", from the posthumously published The Architecture of Country Houses.

The essential features of Downing's pattern, such as its floor plan, the low, broad roof; construction into a hillside exposing the basement on one side and multiple galleries and balconies offering views of a nearby stream, remain.

He praised "the deep and mysterious wood" with "dark, intricate and mazy walks" in the "Wilderness" in the north of the property near the Saw Kill.