Edgewater was built for John R. Livingston as a present to his daughter Margaretta on the occasion of her marriage to Captain Rawlins Lowndes Brown of Charleston, South Carolina. It was one of several river-side seats built by the Livingston family in this era, including Montgomery Place, Teviotdale, The Hill, and an eccentrically designed house known as “Old Turtle.”

In 1853, Edgewater was purchased from the Browns by Robert Donaldson, a North Carolina native who moved to New York to pursue a career in business. Thirty-five years earlier, Donaldson had toured the Hudson River Valley and recorded in his private journal he thought it “the consummation of Earthly Bliss to live in one of those palaces, on such a Noble River, under such a Government.”

Donaldson was committed to the house and enlarged it the following year with an octagonal library after designs by Alexander Jackson Davis. Davis also provided…