ARDEN (ESTATE)

'Arden' was the name of the 30,000-acre (120 km² ) estate owned by railroad magnate Edward Harriman and Mary Averell Harriman outside Harriman, New York. The main house is located at the top of a mountain east of the hamlet, reachable by Arden House Road from NY 17
In 1885 Harriman learned that the 7,863-acre (32 km²) Parrott family estate was for sale. He bought it for $52,500 and named it in honor of Mrs. Parrot— it was her maiden name. Over the next several years he purchased an additional twenty thousand acres (80 km²), almost forty different parcels of land, and built forty miles of bridle paths to connect them all. The area around the estate, south of the nearby village of Harriman, became known as Arden as well. Harriman had planned it for many years, but lived in it for only a few months before his death.
It was from this estate that his widow would donate ten thousand acres (40 km²) and one million dollars to the state to start Harriman State Park in 1910. The house is presently used as a conference center by Columbia University; it is a National Historic Landmark but is not open to the public.

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