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North Shore (Long Island)

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The bluffs of the North Shore

The North Shore of Long Island is the area along Long Island's northern coast, bordering Long Island Sound. Long Island's North Shore is known for its extreme wealth and lavish estates. The North Shore has a history of affluence, most notably at the turn of the 20th century, which earned it the nickname "the Gold Coast".[1] Historically, this term is used only in reference to the Long Island coastline in the towns of North Hempstead, Oyster Bay, and Huntington, in Nassau and western Suffolk County. The easternmost certified Gold Coast Mansion is the Geissler Estate, located just west of Indian Hills Country Club in Fort Salonga, within the Town of Huntington.[2][3]

Being a remnant of glacial moraine, the North Shore is somewhat hilly, and its beaches along the Long Island Sound are more rocky than those on the flat, sandy outwash plain of the South Shore along the Atlantic Ocean. Large boulders known as glacial erratics are scattered across the area.[4]

Gold Coast nickname

Background

Because of the late-19th-century construction of the private estates of Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, Whitneys, Charles Pratt, J. P. Morgan, F. W. Woolworth, and others, the North Shore has been portrayed as elegant. Many stately old homes can be found there, and an "old money" atmosphere pervades. Some of the largest or most prominent ones, such as Castle Gould (known as Hempstead House under the ownership of Daniel Guggenheim) in Sands Point, Sagamore Hill, Vanderbilt Museum, Alexander P. de Seversky Mansion, and Oheka Castle still exist, but are no longer private homes. There are many articles, books, and films depicting Gold Coast Mansions.

During the Second Industrial Revolution, great fortunes were made in steel, transportation and other industries. America was a land of unparalleled natural resources, rapid growth, open space and the biggest cities had begun to form. Transportation had exploded across the landscape and those who could keep up with or facilitate the growth were the beneficiaries of great wealth. Many new millionaires were created. Beginning in the early 1890s, there was a great increase in fine home building on what became known as the Gold Coast of Long Island.

Wealthy industrialists and bankers such as the Vanderbilts, Astors, Whitneys, Morgans, Pratts, Hearsts, and Guggenheims spent fortunes on lavish lifestyles including opulent mansions, castles and chateaus. These are commonly referred to as Gold Coast Mansions, the topic of many books and articles (see references below) since the building spree began. One of these was the second largest residence in the U.S., Otto Kahn's Oheka Castle. Over 500 mansions were built for the wealthy families of the industrial revolution along Long Island's north shore during the beginning of the 20th century, most concentrated in 70 square miles (180 km2). Only about 200 survive.

The greatest architects, landscapers, decorators and firms including Stanford White, John Russell Pope, Guy Lowell, and Carrère and Hastings were employed. Architectural styles included English Tudor, French Chateau, Georgian, Gothic, Mediterranean, Norman, Roman, Spanish, and combinations of all of these. Rooms, outdoor structures, and entire buildings were dismantled in Europe to be reassembled on the North Shore. Besides the great houses there were formal gardens, gazebos, greenhouses, stables, guest houses, gate houses, swimming pools, reflecting pools, ponds, children’s playhouses, pleasure palaces, golf courses, and tennis courts. Activities such as horse riding, hunting, fishing, fox hunting, polo, yachting, golf, swimming, tennis, skeet shooting and winter sports, were accommodated by the estates or the exclusive clubs nearby: the Beaver Dam Club, the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club (1871), Meadow Brook Club (1881), Manhasset Bay Yacht Club (1892), Piping Rock Club (1912), and Creek Club (1923). Privacy was maintained with the huge land holdings, hedges and trees, fences, gates and gate houses, private roads, and lack of maps showing the location of the houses.

Due in no small part to its Gilded Age lineage, the western stretch of the North Shore is considered the more fashionable of Long Island's coasts. Once the island splits into two forks at its east end, the North Shore becomes largely rural, and hence the last semi-authentic bastion of pre-Levitt middle class life on Long Island. This area, known as the North Fork, contrasts starkly with the Manhattan-ized South Fork's Hamptons. Once the home of Long Island's duck farms, since the 1980s the North Fork has reinvented itself as a major center for the production of wine. The North Fork terminates at Orient Point, where ferries leave for New London, CT. and Block Island, RI. Greenport is the eastern terminus of the Long Island Rail Road. The North Fork also provides the quickest access route to fashionable Shelter Island, an enclave on Peconic Bay once world-renowned for its scallops, via the ferry that leaves from Greenport, adjacent to the rail road station.

Demolished mansions

Some mansions burned down, others that were abandoned were vandalized or overtaken by vegetation. Many were torn down to make room for developments, as the Great Depression, poor financial decisions, increasing requirements for upkeep, and increasing income taxes depleted family fortunes. Some of the notable mansions that are now gone are included in the table below with some of their features.

Mansion Construction Rooms Acres Architects Status Location
Beacon Towers 1917–1918 60 18 Hunt & Hunt demolished 1945 40°51′53″N 73°43′40″W / 40.86472°N 73.72778°W / 40.86472; -73.72778
Burrwood 1898–1899 40+ 1,000 Carrère and Hastings demolished 1995 40°53′1″N 73°28′12″W / 40.88361°N 73.47000°W / 40.88361; -73.47000
Farnsworth c. 1914 50 Guy Lowell demolished 1966 40°51′50″N 73°33′58″W / 40.86389°N 73.56611°W / 40.86389; -73.56611 (stable and garage)
Ferguson Castle 1908 40 Allen W. Jackson demolished 1970 40°53′39″N 73°25′6″W / 40.89417°N 73.41833°W / 40.89417; -73.41833 (gate house)
Garvan 1891 60 101 demolished mid-1970s 40°47′59″N 73°36′4″W / 40.79972°N 73.60111°W / 40.79972; -73.60111
Harbor Hill 1900–1902 688 Stanford White demolished Spring 1947 40°47′57″N 73°38′1″W / 40.79917°N 73.63361°W / 40.79917; -73.63361
Inisfada 1920 87 225 John Torrey Windrim demolished December 2013 40°47′07″N 73°39′59.2″W / 40.78528°N 73.666444°W / 40.78528; -73.666444
Laurelton Hall 1902–1906 65 600 Louis Comfort Tiffany burned down 1957 40°52′22″N 73°29′1″W / 40.87278°N 73.48361°W / 40.87278; -73.48361
Matinecock Point 1913 41 257 Christopher Grant La Farge demolished 1980/1981 40°53′59″N 73°37′53″W / 40.89972°N 73.63139°W / 40.89972; -73.63139
Meudon c. 1900 80 300 Charles P.H. Gilbert demolished 1955 40°53′51″N 73°36′15″W / 40.89750°N 73.60417°W / 40.89750; -73.60417
Pembroke 1914–1916? 82 62 Charles P.H. Gilbert demolished 1968 40°52′21″N 73°39′11″W / 40.87250°N 73.65306°W / 40.87250; -73.65306
Rosemary Farm 1907 159 William Eyre burned down 1991 or 1992 40°54′25″N 73°28′38″W / 40.90694°N 73.47722°W / 40.90694; -73.47722
Roslyn House 1891 James Brown Lord demolished 1974 40°47′55″N 73°36′43″W / 40.79861°N 73.61194°W / 40.79861; -73.61194
Westbrook Farms/Knollwood 1906–1920 60 262 Hiss & Weekes demolished 1959 40°49′33″N 73°32′11″W / 40.82583°N 73.53639°W / 40.82583; -73.53639

Other estates

Other Gold Coast estates include:

Cities, villages, neighborhoods, and hamlets

In English literature the North Shore is perhaps best known as the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, which centered on the area's wealth and the aspiration of the title character to be accepted as a part of its society. The novel's "West Egg" and "East Egg" were fictionalized versions of the real North Shore villages of Kings Point and Sands Point, respectively. The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille is a work of fiction set in the area. The distinctive upper class speech pattern known as Locust Valley lockjaw takes its name from the North Shore's Locust Valley area. The aristocratic cachet persists despite suburban infill converting much of the North Shore into commuter towns.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Long Island". Classical Excursions. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
  2. ^ "Port Washington Patch". Planck LLC d/b/a Patch Media. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  3. ^ "Makamah Beach & Geissler's estate, in Fort Salonga". Advameg, Inc. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  4. ^ "Geology of Long Island". Garvies Point Museum. Retrieved 25 November 2012.

Sources

  • AIA Architectural Guide to Nassau and Suffolk Counties. American Institute of Architects. Long Island Chapter, 1992.
  • Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist's Country Estate. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
  • Hewitt, Mark Alan. The Architect and the American Country House, 1890-1940. Yale Univ. Press. 1990.
  • MacKay, Robert B. Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects 1860-1940. W.W. Norton, 1997.
  • Mateyunas, Paul J. North Shore Long Island: Country Houses 1890-1950. Acanthus Press, 2007.
  • Mensing, Kenneth G. and Rita Langdon. Hillwood: The Long Island estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post. Long Island University, 2008.
  • Randall, Monica. The Mansions of Long Island's Gold Coast. Monica Randall . Rizzoli, 1979.
  • Randall, Monica. Winfield: Living in the Shadow of Woolworths. Thomas Dunne, 2003.
  • Sclare, Lisa and Donald. Beaux-Arts Estates: A Guide to the Architecture of Long Island. Viking Press, 1980.
  • Spinzia, Raymond E. and Judith A. Long Island's Prominent North Shore Families: Their Estates and Their Country Homes vol. 1-2. VirtualBookworm.com, 2006.
  • Wilson, Richard Guy. Harbor Hill: Portrait of a House. W.W. Norton, 2008.

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