Landscape Information
This five-acre site, located on South Pearl Street, one-half mile west of the Hudson River and one mile south of downtown, was originally part of a 900-acre farm and estate established in the late eighteenth century by Phillip Van Rensselaer. It features a Georgian-Style mansion (1787), located on a sloped lawn—graded during Van Rensselaer’s tenure—to take advantage of historic river views.
Following Van Rensselaer’s death the property was subdivided; in 1913 his descendant Catherine Putnam Rankin and her husband Edward acquired the residence and surrounding acreage. They improved the grounds: planting pine, maple, birch, and larch trees; erecting a wood perimeter fence; and, to the southwest, laying out a flower and vegetable garden at the rear of the mansion. Developed and maintained by the Rankins’ daughter Emily, the latter contained six rectangular plots, oriented symmetrically on an axial path and anchored by a wooden arbor and classical folly (both reconstructed).
The estate was donated to a non-profit after Emily Rankin’s death in 1963, and opened to the public the following year. Today, the property is accessed from South Pearl Street by way of a semicircular, crushed-stone drive that frames the sloping lawn. Masses of ornamental shrubs and individual shade trees—such as black walnut, black willow, and honey locust (many of which date from the Rankin period)—punctuate the slope. Behind the mansion, an expanse of lawn is edged by copses of deciduous trees that screen adjacent residential properties from view. The rear garden is now characterized by beds of herbaceous peonies, scattered evergreens, including yew and arborvitae, and borders of mock orange and privet.
In the 1980s Doell and Doell, Garden Historians and Landscape Preservation Planners produced a landscape management plan. Cherry Hill was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and is located within the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area.
