The Devil in the Details

A “Cliff Notes” Story

September 2023

In Alpine, New Jersey, there is a gothic tower that dwarfs the surrounding mansions along Rio Vista Drive. Not only is this structure separate from the estates in the neighborhood — but it is also smack-dab in the middle of the road. The tower’s large archways and ornate decorations provide the perfect backdrop for a grisly story.

Such a sight breeds all manner of urban legend about its origins and the ghosts which supposedly inhabit it. In one telling, a farmer had the tower built because he wanted to be able to know what time it was from anywhere on his farm (perhaps a watch would be more economical…?). Another version states that a millionaire built this tower for his wife — and that one day she jumped off the top after seeing him in the midst of an affair … and so is doomed to haunt the area for eternity. Other tellers go all-in on the folk-name of the place: The Devil’s Tower. These more imaginative versions tell of a demon that chases your car or appears in the upper levels, if you do the right things to summon it (drive backwards three times around the circle in which the tower stands, say, perhaps at the stroke of midnight…).

Like most history, in Bergen County and elsewhere, there are grains of truth in the myths. No Devil created this tower; instead its construction was at the behest of a Spanish-born “Sugar Baron” named Manuel Rionda. This man was a peer of the wealthiest American elite, but this structure was not frivolously built to please his wife or to tell time on his vast estate. The “Devil’s Tower” is actually an ornate water tower! And while Rionda kept an office at the top, accessible from a small elevator, there was also a large wooden water tank in the tower, designed to provide water pressure to the various buildings on the estate.

The Rionda Family grounds were over 300 acres in size, extending from where Alpine Lookout is on the on the Palisades Interstate Parkway today, all the way down the backslope of the Palisades to present-day Academy of the Holy Angels, and included several ponds (one of which was opened by the Riondas to local children as a swimming hole) and elaborate bridle paths (a graceful arched bridge from these still survives in some Cresskill parkland). The family named the estate “Rio Vista,” and the manor house and the nearby water tower boasted spectacular views of the Hudson River, Yonkers, New York City, and Long Island Sound beyond. Though the locale seems isolated today, the Riondas were part of a network of wealthy families who had mansions and summer estates along the top of the Palisades. This “millionaire's row” included families like the Lambs, the Mileses, and the Goins. Newer arrivals to this stolid row of cliff-top mansions included the Ringlings (of circus fame), the Stoddards, and a Zabriskie. During the early twentieth century, the Rionda’s mansion was host to costume parties, balls, and elaborate luncheons where these neighbors mingled with others from New York City’s elite.

In fact, it was one of these neighbors who designed “Devil’s Tower” for Rionda. The architect Charles Rollinson Lamb followed his family’s legacy of talented artists and craftspeople (his father Joseph founded the J. & R. Lamb Studios, renowned makers of stained glass windows and elaborate pulpits and other carvings for churches). Along with designing the Rionda’s water tower, Charles was the designer of the short-lived Dewey Arch in New York City and other war memorials, and was a founding member of the National Sculpture Society, which is still active today.

As for the bereft wife haunting the arches of the tower, Harriet Clarke Rionda had no such horrors attached to her. A tie between her and the tower probably began due to her ashes being interred in a nearby chapel, also designed by Chrales Lamb, after her entirely natural demise, from the after-effects of a stroke, in a New York hospital in 1922. To visit her and her devoted husband today (he died in Alpine in 1943, at around eighty years of age), you can visit their mausoleum at Brookside Cemetery in Englewood.

From a shrouded legend, we can discover the man who erected this “ungodly” tower, its purpose, its architect, and the much happier story of Mrs. Rionda — a real-life example of how the devil can only be found in the details!

– Francesca Costa –