Blithewood Mansion

Blithewood is currently a forty-five-acre area of the Bard College campus landscape that is associated with a historic estate comprised of a manor house, outbuildings, drives, surrounding gardens, lawns, and meadows.

The manor is not open to the public as it used for Bard administrative offices, but the small-scale adjacent Italian formal garden is a gem not to be missed.
The variety and colors are impressive, and the backdrop of the Hudson and the Catskill Mountains on the other side is unbeatable.

HOURS
Open daily from sunrise to sunset

ADMISSION
Free

SPECIAL NOTE:
Blithewood Mansion was built by National Guard captain and real estate mogul Andrew C. Zabriskie, who commissioned four statues for his garden. Each statue would depict one of his four daughters. When tragedy struck and one of his daughters was killed falling out of a window of a New York City apartment, her statue went missing. Rumor has it that her ghost wanders the property in place of the missing statue. In 1951, the mansion was given to Bard College.