Tours of Kykuit, one the Hudson Valley’s most popular attractions, are being suspended for 2026 as part of a plan to upgrade and expand public access to the entire Pocantico Center campus in Tarrytown.
The Beaux-Arts villa that was once the Rockefeller family’s home typically hosts some 20,000 visitors from May through November each year for tours of the house and gardens.
All other activities at Pocantico — public programs, artist residencies and conferences — will continue as usual.
Pocantico, which the family bequeathed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1979, is maintained and administered by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
“Kykuit tours will be on hiatus for the 2026 season as we develop a new vision for the visitation program,” said Sarah Edkins, director of communications. “The pause will also enable the RBF to complete upgrades that expand public access to the entire Pocantico campus, including a visitor parking lot and a sculpture walk.”
Expanded programming with the additions of Abeyton Lodge in 2018 and the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center in 2022 has increased visitor interest at Pocantico.
“As a result the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has decided to think about tours of the campus more holistically, which requires managing them in-house,” Edkins stated.
This means Historic Hudson Valley will no longer administer Kykuit’s tour program, which required visitors to board shuttle buses to Pocantico from HHV’s visitor center at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow.
“We are deeply grateful to Historic Hudson Valley and its dedicated docents for three decades of partnership, bringing the heart of this historic campus to life for the public,” Edkins stated.
Former Kykuit museum educators can reach out to pocanticoprograms@rbf.org if they are interested in remaining involved with the estate, she said.
Rob Schweitzer, HHV’s vice president of communications and commerce, expressed disappointment at the suspension of the visitation program, especially during America’s Semiquincentennial in 2026, which also marks the 50th anniversary of Kykuit’s designation as a National Historic Landmark.
More than 50 paid part-time museum educators and five full-time staff members were laid off due to RBF’s decision to pause the tours and terminate the agreement with HHV, which took the nonprofit organization by surprise, Schweitzer said.
Visitors to Kykuit have been a major driver of tourism, he noted, and HHV hoped the program would eventually be resurrected at the same scale as originally mandated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“HHV is extremely proud of the Kykuit visitation program we’ve operated for the past 31 years, in which we welcomed more than one million visitors to experience the property and learn about the enduring, positive legacy of the Rockefeller family and its values of philanthropy, conservation, education, and community mindedness,” Schweitzer said.
