Martin J. Ryerson purchased the historic ironworks and began building the present Manor House in 1807 while still operating the iron mines and forges on the property. New York’s Peter Cooper, a remarkable inventor and industrialist and his young son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt, purchased Ringwood in 1854.

The properties were purchased for the rich local iron deposits but Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt set about making the old Ringwood estate their summer home. Hewitt enlarged the Manor in the 1860s and 70s. The completed house contains 51 rooms built in a wide range of styles, that characterize the Victorian Period. This impressive house is 226.5 feet long and features 24 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, 28 bedrooms and more than 250 windows. The forges, mills, village and farms that serviced the iron industry gradually turned into the Victorian summer estate of the Hewitts, one of the wealthiest and most influential families of 19th-century America.