Skylands (estate)

About

Skylands is a 1,119-acre (4.53 km2) estate property located in Ringwood State Park in Ringwood, New Jersey, a borough in Passaic County in the state of New Jersey. The Skylands property consists of the historic Skylands Manor mansion, and the New Jersey Botanical Garden; the botanical garden is 96 acres (390,000 m2) and it is open to the public year-round. The Skylands property is within the Ramapo Mountains and it is maintained by the Skylands Association. The property is marketed with the garden as New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands.

The house and gardens, including formal gardens and specimen plantings, were built in the 1920s by Clarence MacKenzie Lewis, a New York City stockbroker and civil engineer. Lewis hired architect John Russell Pope to design the 44-room Tudor Revival manor house. The manor is a reproduction English mansion featuring rectangular, bay and oriel windows. A nine-hole golf course once graced this property. In addition, from circa 1950 the property was used as a college campus for Shelton College until in 1966 the state purchased the 1,117 acres of Skylands from the college, which moved to Cape May.