Edgewater, built in 1825 on the Hudson River in upstate New York, combines classical architecture with a dramatic setting to create one of the Hudson Valley's most charming river residences. The house is built on a small peninsula extending into the river and faces due west across the river to the Catskill Mountains. Surrounded by green lawn, ancient trees, and water on three sides, the house seems secluded and has the feel of being on a small island.

Edgewater is presumed to have been built by John R. Livingston, of the wealthy Hudson River Livingston family, for his daughter Margaret, who married Captain Lowndes Brown of Charleston, South Carolina. Livingston deeded the land to his daughter on November 28, 1824, but there is no evidence to support the local assumption that he also built the house. This was one of four marriages between the Livingstons of the Hudson Valley and the prominent Lowndes family of South Carolina.

With its high ceilings and tall windows, Edgewater seems more suited to a Southern clime than the Hudson Valley. There is some reason to believe that the design of the house may have been provided by Robert Mills, a prominent American architect of the early 19th Century and a native Charlestonian who returned to work in Charleston in the 1820s. Edgewater, with its Doric columns, Roman-arched doors, and tri-partite windows, is very similar to Mills' work in South Carolina at the time. Overall, the house is more Roman than Greek, and the interior woodwork detail seems more Federal period than Greek Revival.

The idyllic Livingston/Lowndes Brown life at Edgewater was shattered in 1852 with the coming of the New York to Albany railroad (land taken by eminent domain) on tracks located directly behind the house. Both John R. Livingston and his son-in-law Lowndes Brown died the same year the railroad was built. So outraged was the widow Margaret Livingston Brown that she sold the house and moved to London, vowing never to return to the United States. She is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Edgewater was purchased from Mrs. Brown in 1852 by Robert Donaldson and his wife Susan Gaston Donaldson, both native North Carolinians. The Donaldsons had earlier removed to New York, a move made possible by a substantial inheritance that Mr. Donaldson had received from his bachelor uncle Samuel Donaldson, a highly regarded Scottish merchant banker in London. The Donaldsons, who were patrons of architecture and art, added the charming Octagon library to the north side of Edgewater in 1854. The architect is documented - Alexander Jackson Davis. Donaldson had worked with Davis previously on various projects at the University of North Carolina and on the State Capitol in Raleigh. Donaldson later introduced Davis to Andrew Jackson Downing, the writer and progenitor of romantic landscaping in the Hudson Valley. The Donaldsons were also friends of Asher Durand and Samuel F.B. Morse, Hudson River School artists who visited Edgewater. The arts certainly flourished at Edgewater under the Donaldsons whose descendants retained the house until 1902, ending a half century of Donaldson ownership.

For the next four decades, up to World War II, Edgewater was owned by the John Jay Chapman family, but during most of the period the house stood empty. The Chapmans built a similar but more modern classical villa, which they called Sylvania, on the hillside above Edgewater, well removed from the noisy trains below.

The author Gore Vidal purchased Edgewater in 1946, after the war, and resided in the old house until 1969, when he sold it to Richard H. Jenrette. Some of Vidal's earlier writing was done at Edgewater. He had a fascinating coterie of literary friends who kept Edgewater lively.

Jenrette, who bought Edgewater from Vidal in 1969, has now owned the place for 37 years. He has repurchased surrounding land that had been sold and has filled the house with period antiques and art, including the Donaldson's unusual suite of Duncan Phyfe furniture and family portraits as well as objets d'art from the Livingston era.

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