Lengthy Island’s Gold Coast nonetheless shines — albeit in a extra subdued method than when “The Great Gatsby” was printed 100 years in the past.
The novel, which is celebrating its centennial this week, is about within the mammoth mansions of the tony North Shore. Whereas a few of the colossal houses from the period stay, the environment is much less debaucherous than it was in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s day.
In 1924, when Fitzgerald was finishing his first draft, the velocity restrict on state highways was 30 mph, and the Hamptons have been a wearisome schlep, nonetheless the area of gnarled fishermen and potato farmers with outdated Dutch names.
The “it” spots for hotsy-totsy hoopla hugged commuter-friendly villages on the Lengthy Island Sound — the place the youngsters and grandchildren of Gilded Age industrial barons performed and the Jazz Age’s newly minted tycoons went to buy respectability.
At its peak, the Gold Coast, which extends from Nice Neck to Northport, had roughly 1,200 mansions, nearly half of which have been set on 50 acres or extra. Nice households, such because the Vanderbilts, Astors, Guggenheims, Roosevelts, Hearts, and Whitneys, referred to as these large homes house.
They have been egos externalized. Forty to 60 rooms have been the norm, and lots of had upwards of 90. There have been over-the-top facilities galore, from lake-sized swimming swimming pools set in formal gardens to equestrian parks and sunken tennis courts.
In the present day, lower than a 3rd of the outdated mansions stay. Most have been razed to make means for brand new development. Of people who nonetheless stand, only some dozen are non-public residences.
Artist Irene Vultaggio and her husband, Arizona Ice Tea billionaire Don Vultaggio, reside in a sprawling French Chateau-style stone manor instantly subsequent to the Sands Level Lighthouse, which in addition they personal, in North Hempstead.
“I live in Daisy’s house,” Irene instructed The Submit. “My house is the house with the lighthouse . . . So [Gatsby] would look towards my house, and there would be the green light.”
The Vultaggios constructed the house within the Nineteen Nineties. The property was beforehand the location of the legendary Beacon Towers.
By the point “The Great Gatsby” was printed in 1925, the home was owned by publishing leviathan William Randolph Hearst. It was demolished in 1945 after Hearst returned the house to the financial institution for tax functions.
Regardless of its lighthouse proximity, Fitzgerald students consider it was extra seemingly that the house was the inspiration for Gatsby’s gaudy mega-mansion reasonably than Daisy’s.
Created for the widowed socialite Alva Smith Belmont Vanderbilt by Hunt & Hunt between 1917 and 1918, the roughly 140-room property was a “Gothic fantasy,” writes architectural historian Richard Chafee, with “astonishing towers and pinnacles” that borrowed from the medieval palace in Seville.
It “was a colossal affair by any standard,” Fitzgerald writes within the nice novel. “It was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming-pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion.”
When Baz Luhrmann wanted architectural inspo for his 2013 adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, he regarded to each Beacon Towers and Previous Westbury Gardens, the previous property of metal inheritor John Shaffer Phipps. However the movie was really shot in Sydney, Australia.
Others contend that Fitzgerald obtained his massive concepts from Oheka Fortress, the biggest non-public house in New York and the second largest within the US — behind Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Property.
Situated within the West Hills part of Huntington, the 127-room, 109,000-square-foot behemoth was completed in 1919 by financier Otto Hermann Kahn. Within the Twenties, it swung with lavish events for celebrities and heads of state. In 1939, a number of years after Kahn’s dying, and stricken by money owed, it was bought to the New York Division of Sanitation as a “super-de luxe country club” for the division’s 20,000 staff. It was rechristened “Sanita.”
For the final 25 years or so, it’s operated as a resort and wedding ceremony venue. Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin obtained hitched there in 2010.
No matter the place Gatsby lived, in response to Vultaggio, the Gold Coast isn’t something just like the champagne-soaked society bacchanalia it was in Fitzgerald’s day.
Quite, it’s the place enterprise titans like Ken Langone, Aby Rosen, and Louis Bacon come to really escape all of it.
“It’s quiet,” she mentioned. “I don’t have to impress anybody. I can just live my life under the radar. I’m in my pajamas all day in my garden. If people come here, I tell them I’m the gardener. It’s nice.”
Costs for mansions within the space are equally low-key. At a time when $100 million gross sales have gotten routine on the East Finish, a $10 million deal on the Gold Coast is uncommon.
The median sale worth within the space for the final quarter of 2024 was simply $1.3 million, in response to Douglas Elliman.
Nonetheless, when the suitable house hits the market, it makes an impression, and stock is proscribed.
In December, Erchless, a 92-acre, 26-room property at 75 Submit Highway in Previous Westbury, bought for $21 million — setting an all-time sale report for a residence in each Nassau County and Previous Westbury.
The Georgian-style brick mansion was constructed for Howard Phipps, the son of Henry Phipps, Jr., a associate at Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Metal Firm, in 1936. It bought with a swimming pool, cabanas, a tennis courtroom, greenhouses and potting sheds, a horse secure, barns, a superintendent’s home, and a chauffeur’s home with a storage.
Most significantly, its award-winning rhododendron backyard “is the finest of its kind,” supplying the New York Botanical Backyard, mentioned Maria Babaev of Douglas Elliman, who represented the customer within the Erchless deal.
She famous that whereas the realm is not a swinging scene, these shopping for these properties admire the Fitzgerald connection.
“The Gatsby lifestyle was fiction, but on the North Shore, it’s kind of real,” she instructed The Submit. “And the people who purchase these homes are very enthusiastic about old-world charm. They aren’t that different from who was buying here 100 years ago. They want to create a multi-generational legacy.”
Prime colleges, a low-key environment, and commutability are the key attracts to the realm. A lot of her shoppers bounce between an condo within the metropolis, an property on the Gold Coast, and a summer season playground within the Hamptons.
They don’t sacrifice fashionable creature comforts for legacy residing. Patrons of grand outdated estates usually set up cutting-edge know-how and huge wellness areas.
Exclusivity can be an element, mentioned Maggie Keats, a Gold Coast dealer with Elliman. In recent times, she’s bought varied native estates — together with the $11 million Normandy-style mansion constructed within the late Twenties by railroad heiress Mary Harriman Rumsey in Sands Level and the $6.5 million Sands Level house of “Stars and Stripes Forever” composer John Philip Sousa.
“There are not a ton of these homes left,” she lamented. “They were broken up over the years, subdivided, demolished for tax reasons or transformed.”
Villa Carola, the previous property of Isaac Guggenheim, is now the Village Membership of Sands Level, and Eagle’s Nest, the previous house of William Okay. Vanderbilt, is now the Vanderbilt Museum & Planetarium.
“New homes are beautiful, but these homes were built differently,” Keats mentioned. “There was no expense spared and they have a presence of place because they’ve sat so long on their property. The trees have had a chance to mature. The landscaping is beautiful. The integrity of the build is very special.”
One relic of Fitzgerald’s time is at present on the market at 1985-4 Cedar Swamp Highway in Brookville. Often called Haut Bois, it was inbuilt 1916 for architect and Edith Wharton collaborator Ogden Codman Jr. and was impressed by the Palace of Versailles. The seven-bedroom home is asking $14.9 million with Daniel Gale Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty.
Additionally in the marketplace is Mini Oheka — a marriage present given by Otto Kahn to his son in 1936 and positioned at 491 Muttontown Highway in Muttontown. The nine-bedroom French-style chateau sits on 10.4 acres and is listed for simply $3.9 million with Gale.
However when you’re on the lookout for one among Jay Gatsby’s orgies, head additional East, Vultaggio asserted.
“I’m Cinderella, and I live in a castle,” she mentioned. “[But] people here aren’t living that crazy life like in the Hamptons. I hate the Hamptons.”
