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Sunny hill
The Thompsons bought the estate in 1863 and kept the name
Frederick Ferris Thompson, a prominent banker in New York City, and his wife Mary Clark Thompson bought the Sonnenberg property in 1863. They kept the name, which means "sunny hill" in German. Her father, Myron Holley Clark, was Governor of New York State in 1855. Their main home was a large townhouse on Madison Avenue in New York City.
The mansion
A Boston architect designed a 40-room Queen Anne mansion
The 40-room Queen Anne style mansion was built between 1885 and 1887 and designed by Francis R. Allen, a noted Boston architect. Its facade is rusticated graystone with Medina sandstone trim, and the gables are timber and stucco. The roof is slate with lead-coated copper. In 1914 the Thompsons had a Roman bath built as a swimming area.
Nine gardens
Nine gardens were designed and built between 1902 and 1919
The gardens were designed and built between 1902 and 1919 and originally consisted of nine gardens in a variety of styles. The Rose Garden has over 2,500 rose bushes. The Italian Garden has four sunken parterres in a fleur-de-lis pattern, with about 20,000 annuals in the bedding. The Moonlight Garden has only white flowers, blooming late afternoon, many of them fragrant.
The glasshouses
A Lord & Burnham conservatory was built between 1903 and 1915
The Conservatory is a Lord & Burnham complex built between 1903 and 1915 and considered one of the most important residential greenhouse complexes in the United States. It includes a domed Palm House, with other glass houses for orchids, cacti and tropical plants.
A hospital
A veterans' hospital followed in 1931, and the park opened in 1973
The Thompsons had no children. The nephew who inherited the estate after Mary Clark Thompson's death in 1923 sold it to the Federal Government in 1931, which built a veteran's hospital on the adjacent farmland. In 1972 an act of Congress called the Sonnenberg Bill transferred the mansion and grounds to a local non-profit formed to restore it. It opened to the public in 1973.
In this plan
It is one of the stops on this plan.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Sonnenberg Gardens, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.