Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park

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Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park is located on the west bank of the Connetquot River, in Long Island's Suffolk County, New York, USA nearby East Islip in the hamlet of Great River. The extensive landscape garden is in the nature of an estate arboretum, laid out, starting in 1887, for William Bayard Cutting (1850 - 1912) by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, and given to the people of Long Island by his widow and daughter "to provide an oasis of beauty and quiet for the pleasure, rest, and refreshment of those who delight in outdoor beauty; and to bring about a greater appreciation and understanding of the value and importance of informal planting." Charles Sprague Sargent, director of the Arnold Arboretum advised in developing the extensive conifer collection north of the carriage house. Some of the most mature planting was badly damaged in Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

1 Westbrook
2 List of Activities and Services
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] Westbrook

Westbrook, the large rambling house of many gables and tall chimneys, in the Tudor style cesigned by architect Charles C. Haight (1886), is also open to the public. Westbrook is one of the last remaining South Shore estates and as most in existence; it is neither family owned or occupied. Scottish heather was shipped to provide thatch for the gate house, which remains at the corner of Montauk Highway and Great River Road— a practice that was interrupted by World War I. In 1895 Mr. Cutting and his brother laid out a golf course at Westbrook, known to be the first private golf course in the United States.

When a fire in 1895 burned down many of the farm buildings, Stanford White was commissioned to draw the plans for a modern dairy with many innovative features, known as Westbrook Farms.

William Bayard Cutting's grandfather, Robert Cutting, was Robert Fulton's partner in the ferry from Brooklyn to New York; they married Livingston sisters. Cutting was a West India merchant who developed railroad interests; his son was a pioneer in refining sugar from sugar beets.