Lengthy Island’s Gold Coast nonetheless shines — albeit in a extra subdued method than when “The Nice 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 properties 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 pace restrict on state highways was 30 mph, and the Hamptons had been a wearisome schlep, nonetheless the area of gnarled fishermen and potato farmers with previous Dutch names.
The “it” spots for hotsy-totsy hoopla hugged commuter-friendly villages on the Lengthy Island Sound — the place the kids 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 had been set on 50 acres or extra. Nice households, such because the Vanderbilts, Astors, Guggenheims, Roosevelts, Hearts, and Whitneys, known as these big homes residence.
They had been egos externalized. Forty to 60 rooms had 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.
Immediately, lower than a 3rd of the previous mansions stay. Most have been razed to make means for brand new development. Of people who nonetheless stand, just a few dozen are personal 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 dwell in Daisy’s home,” Irene instructed The Submit. “My home is the home with the lighthouse . . . So [Gatsby] would look in direction of my home, and there can be the inexperienced mild.”
The Vultaggios constructed the house within the Nineties. The property was beforehand the location of the legendary Beacon Towers.
By the point “The Nice 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 imagine it was extra possible that the house was the inspiration for Gatsby’s gaudy mega-mansion somewhat 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 customary,” Fitzgerald writes within the nice novel. “It was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one facet, spanking new below a skinny beard of uncooked ivy, and a marble swimming-pool, and greater than forty acres of garden and backyard. It was Gatsby’s mansion.”
When Baz Luhrmann wanted architectural inspo for his 2013 adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, he seemed 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 bought his large concepts from Oheka Fort, the biggest personal residence 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 Nineteen Twenties, it swung with lavish events for celebrities and heads of state. In 1939, a number of years after Kahn’s loss of life, and tormented by money owed, it was bought to the New York Division of Sanitation as a “super-de luxe nation membership” for the division’s 20,000 staff. It was rechristened “Sanita.”
For the final 25 years or so, it’s operated as a lodge and wedding ceremony venue. Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin bought hitched there in 2010.
No matter the place Gatsby lived, in keeping with 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 actually escape all of it.
“It’s quiet,” she stated. “I don’t must impress anyone. I can simply dwell my life below the radar. I’m in my pajamas all day in my backyard. If individuals come right here, I inform them I’m the gardener. It’s good.”
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 value within the space for the final quarter of 2024 was simply $1.3 million, in keeping with Douglas Elliman.
Nonetheless, when the proper residence hits the market, it makes an influence, 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 document 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 accomplice 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 best of its type,” supplying the New York Botanical Backyard, stated 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 respect the Fitzgerald connection.
“The Gatsby way of life was fiction, however on the North Shore, it’s form of actual,” she instructed The Submit. “And the individuals who buy these properties are very captivated with old-world allure. They aren’t that completely different from who was shopping for right here 100 years in the past. They need to create a multi-generational legacy.”
Prime colleges, a low-key environment, and commutability are the foremost attracts to the realm. A lot of her shoppers bounce between an house 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. Consumers of grand previous estates sometimes set up cutting-edge know-how and huge wellness areas.
Exclusivity can also be an element, stated 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 Nineteen Twenties by railroad heiress Mary Harriman Rumsey in Sands Level and the $6.5 million Sands Level residence of “Stars and Stripes Eternally” composer John Philip Sousa.
“There usually are not a ton of those properties left,” she lamented. “They had been damaged up through the years, subdivided, demolished for tax causes or remodeled.”
Villa Carola, the previous property of Isaac Guggenheim, is now the Village Membership of Sands Level, and Eagle’s Nest, the previous residence of William Okay. Vanderbilt, is now the Vanderbilt Museum & Planetarium.
“New properties are stunning, however these properties had been constructed otherwise,” Keats stated. “There was no expense spared they usually have a presence of place as a result of they’ve sat so lengthy on their property. The bushes have had an opportunity to mature. The landscaping is gorgeous. The integrity of the construct could be very particular.”
One relic of Fitzgerald’s time is presently on the market at 1985-4 Cedar Swamp Highway in Brookville. Often called Haut Bois, it was in-built 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 reward given by Otto Kahn to his son in 1936 and situated 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 if you happen to’re searching for one in every of Jay Gatsby’s orgies, head additional East, Vultaggio asserted.
“I’m Cinderella, and I dwell in a fortress,” she stated. “[But] individuals right here aren’t residing that loopy life like within the Hamptons. I hate the Hamptons.”
