Through their foundation, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim are continuing to support the great public spaces of Rye. The long-time Rye residents have made a $2 million gift to the Friends of Rye Nature Center (FRNC) to help build a new visitor and education center. The gift marks the public launch of FRNC’s Living Legacy Campaign.
Edgar “Ed” Wachenheim III spent decades building a reputation as a leading value investor, and our local institutions in the City of Rye have benefited from the family’s philanthropic support. In late 2022, the Wachenheims made a $1.5 million gift to open the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Exhibit and Performance Center at the Jay Estate. Then in May of last year, the family put forth a $200,000 challenge toward the Friends of Rye Town Park’s tower building restoration project.
“The Nature Center has always been a place created and sustained by this community,” said Christine Siller, FRNC’s long-time executive director. “Sue and Ed have accelerated our Living Legacy Campaign, giving all of us an opportunity to help ensure that this extraordinary public resource continues to thrive for years to come.”
Living Legacy Campaign and the Wachenheim Center for Environmental Education
From 2019 to 2025, annual program use at the Rye Nature Center increased by more than 66%, and FRNC now educates more than 50,000 people a year. The planned 4,500-square-foot Wachenheim Center for Environmental Education will add flexible learning spaces and a welcoming place for visitors to arrive, supporting continued growth in summer camp, Forest Preschool, community programs, and outreach initiatives.
“My appreciation for the importance of protecting nature began as a child, hiking in the
Adirondacks and protesting the pollution of the Ausable River by a pulp mill,” said Ed Wachenheim. “Sue and I strongly believe in the need to protect our lands, our waters, and the wildlife that inhabit them.”
Ed Wachenheim became an Adirondack 46er at age 17. The Wachenheims have since hiked together in Bhutan, Patagonia, Italy, and Crimea. They also enjoy walking the trails at the Rye Nature Center.
“This extraordinary gift is an investment not simply in a new building, but in the future of environmental education and conservation at the Rye Nature Center,” said James Engerran, president of FRNC’s Board of Directors. “The Wachenheim Center for Environmental Education will give FRNC the space to expand our programs while strengthening our ability to care for this special 47-acre park.”
The Living Legacy Campaign will also support a new entry driveway designed to provide safer, more reliable access to the property, along with other improvements to help FRNC meet its growing program demand.
“If a child plants a tree, there will be one more tree in the world,” Wachenheim said. “If FRNC teaches a child the importance of preserving our lands and waters, maybe someday there will be thousands of healthier forests and thousands of cleaner rivers and lakes in our world.”
But will this gift infringe upon the natural beauty of this space by building an intrusive building with who knows what else, that will crowd out undeveloped land? Will the gift come with conditions, so that the Nature Center will be more about honoring the donors than about preserving the natural surrounds there, one of the last natural spaces in Rye? Get ready for an imposing plaque for the Ed Wachenheim Center, the first thing you will see when driving up to the parking lot. Speaking of; untold amounts of trees are about to be felled to put in a new driveway for the Center, so that large groups of people can drive up there for collective events, that have perhaps nothing to do with the appreciation of nature (morning yoga anyone?). And now plans for what will probably be an imposing building, instead of a recedent structure that is unobtrusive. I prefer the Nature Center as it has always been, a hard-scrabble place where the birds rule and trees reach mightily into the sky.