Article for Elements magazine Leslie

Mind Your Manors How Grand Estates Shaped

Astor, Whitney, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Dupont, Bendel – the great families who shaped America were also instrumental in shaping Long Island. From the Victorian era to the unprecedented prosperity of the 1920s right through the Great Depression, the stately manor homes so lavishly constructed by the wealthy business barons of the day on the famed “Gold Coast” of Long Island’s north shore characterize the landscape of the entire area up to the present day. Everything from architecture, train routes and highways were impacted by these grand old estates, some things more obvious, others more subtle.

By 1890, the north shore’s mix of rural, rolling, wooded hills, tiny seaport villages and Quaker farms underwent an unprecedented historic transformation as tremendously large sprawling country manors and gardens appeared on the horizon. Side by side, farmer and millionaire dwelled until almost every acre became absorbed by an estate. These properties were planned, manicured and maintained down to the minutest detail by some of the country’s most prominent architectural and landscape firms of the era. Famous for their exquisitely grandiose public projects, firms like Carrère & Hastings, designers of The Public Library, Warren & Wetmore, architects of Grand Central Terminal and Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect of Central Park and his sons’ firm Olmsted Brothers were also working on a number of Long Island residences and clubs, creating extraordinarily impressive structures rivaling any European castle or chateau. As homeowners built railroad stations, constructed large hills to compete for the highest home site on the rapidly expanding north shore and planted entire forests on barren fields, two families demolished the entire business district in the village of Lattingtown.

The country manor building boom thrived for the next 30 years, slowing during the outbreak of World War I. After the Great War and through the late 1920s, the opulent “Gold Coast” country estate transformed itself again. Newer homes were still tremendous by most standards, however the days of constructing 20 to 60 thousand square feet or 100-plus-acre estates started to wane. Many of the estate owners came to Long Island to relax and enjoy its picturesque beauty during the long, hot summers, but all too often found themselves in the full-time position of managing their large staffs of 20 to 30 servants in order to keep their estates running smoothly. Additionally, as fashion follows function and societal trends, architecture and clothing of the era were being stripped of their elaborate shells, creating simplistic lines where more ostentatious ones previously existed. Women began wearing more revealing clothing, restrictive social rituals were eased and estates were becoming more compact and scaled down as large plots of land became scarcer.

While the 1929 stock market crash affected most, contrary to popular belief, the north shore country manor was not significantly impacted. Many families continued living the normal lives their major wealth allowed as more of the smaller estates were constructed. The true decline of the lavish country manor was a combination of factors from World War II and ever-increasing property and income taxes to staff shortages and changing design trends. The final dynamic was simple arithmetic. By the 1950s, many estate owners were approaching their twilight years, and as their grand homes and fortunes were passed to the next generation, the buildings and their contents were auctioned off, with fortunes divided among heirs.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a number of these massive homes sat empty as their size and style was considered impractical and extremely expensive. A number of country estates like those of Harry Payne Whitney, Marjorie Merriweather Post (the former Mrs. E. F. Hutton) and Ambrose Clark were converted to the colleges known today as New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), C.W. Post and SUNY Old Westbury. The F. W. Woolworth estate in Glen Cove became the short-lived Grace Downs School, while the William Woodward playhouse in Oyster Bay Cove transformed into St. Pius V Chapel. Walter Farwell’s Mallow became Eastwoods School and Isaac Guggenheim’s Villa Carola in Sands Point, with its private nine-hole golf course, became The IBM Country Club and later in 1995, a golf club for Sands Point residents. A portion of the grounds of Otto Kahn’s monumental 126-room chateau, Oheka, also became a country club, with the remainder of the land used to build the housing development of Cold Spring Harbor Hills; its vast greenhouses now the home of wholesale grower Otto Keil Florists. The magnificent country manors have supplied modern developments with picturesque tree-lined streets, a modern home in Glen Cove with a curiously large brick clock tower soaring above its swimming pool and the Glen Cove YMCA with a recreation building complete with indoor tennis court and pool once the private “playroom” of the Standard Oil Pratt family.

As remnants of Long Island’s sparkling “Gold Coast” remain today, many have since been demolished due to the progressive expansion of Long Island, while others are the influence of the north shore’s forever changed landscape. Specific examples include the almost sudden 90 degree jut south on the Northern State Parkway as you approach Old Westbury from the west. This was part of the estate owner’s successful campaign in diverting the cumbersome parkway away from the village and all the other estates there. The Long Island Expressway was also the cause of much consternation and debate in the village of Old Westbury when its designer, the famed, Robert Moses planned for the expressway to run through the middle of the village, dividing many of the estate lands in half, changing the pristine rural landscape forever. The William P. Thompson and F. Skiddy von Stade properties lost their driveway entrances due to the installation of Jericho Turnpike, with the only remnants remaining today of several picturesque allées of trees starting on one side of the turnpike and ending on the other.

Thanks to America’s most wealthy families and the luxurious grandeur of days past, Long Island is a uniquely fascinating entity of historic architecture, art, parks, museums and culture. With an eclectic mix of Gothic, Medieval and other European inspired storefronts, schools and churches comprised of old estates, Long Island’s affluent social and economic past has provided us with an unsurpassed legacy truly our own.