Pembroke, designed by New York City-based architect Charles P. H. Gilbert, was originally owned by Captain Joseph R. DeLamar. The 82-room mansion, set on the water, included a monumental glass conservatory considered the largest in the world.
Nicholas F. and Genevieve Garvan Brady’s house, Inisfada, in Manhasset contained
a 29x87-ft. hall vaulted with English oak trusses.
For interior designer Ruby Ross Wood and her husband Chalmers Wood, Delano
& Aldrich of New York City designed Little Ipswich in Woodbury, a stylish flat-roofed house inspired by Greek Revival precedent.
Herman B. Duryea’s palazzo, Knole, in Old Westbury was designed by Thomas Hastings of New York City-based Carrère & Hastings. It is one of the few great houses still used as a private residence.
Alva Vanderbilt Belmont’s house, Beacon Towers, a fantasy-like derivation of Europe’s Gothic tradition, is said to be the inspiration for Gatsby’s mansion in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
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The Gold Coast North Shore Long Island: Country Houses, 1890-1950
by Paul J. Mateyunas
Acanthus Press, New York, NY; 2007
368 pp.; hardcover; more than 400 photographs and floor plans; $80
ISBN 978-0-926494-37-4
Reviewed by Anne Walker
At the turn of the 20th century, the rolling hills of Long Island’s North Shore set the stage for some of the most splendid country houses ever built. With levels of private wealth at a peak, the moneyed set lavished incredible fortunes on their suburban estates, transforming the shoreline into a playground or Gold Coast, as it came to be known. As country clubs, sprawling mansions, elaborate tennis-court buildings, private chapels, stable groupings and boathouses designed in a myriad of styles sprang up, the North Shore grew into what was once described by a resident as “one of the most delightful and unusual suburbs in any part of the United States.” North Shore Long Island: Country Houses, 1890-1950, speaks of the halcyon days that produced the area’s illustrious estates, which, as author Paul J. Mateyunas notes, arrived with the “spontaneity of a prairie wildfire” that “burned brightly and hotly for a brief time.” Embedded in the landscape of the storied coastline, the country houses of the North Shore are an imprint of a glorious bygone era in which imagination reigned and architectural integrity prevailed.
Mateyunas is well placed to capture the stunning and intriguing beauty of the North Shore: Over a period of six years, he worked on restoring Fairleigh, a 48-room house in Muttontown, originally commissioned by Standard Oil heir George S. Brewster. As a native of the area, Mateyunas fulfills his lifelong fascination with the North Shore’s architecture by writing this book, illuminating its pages with his clear and pervasive appreciation for the subject matter. With more than 400 historic photographs, floor plans, landscape plans and extensively written descriptions, the book takes readers through roughly 40 exceptional properties, designed by some of the period’s leading firms. Delano & Aldrich, Warren & Wetmore, Carrère & Hastings, Harrie T. Lindeberg, McKim, Mead & White, Hunt & Hunt, Wilson Eyre, Guy Lowell, Ogden Codman and W. Wells Bosworth all feature. The book also includes a portfolio of 45 additional residences in the appendix. Detailed biographies of the architects, the majority of whom studied in Paris, describe other projects they executed on Long Island and beyond. This group of Beaux Arts-trained practitioners had a solid command of Classical precedent and European styles with which to spin an American style well suited to the Gilded Age in which they were working. Together, they produced an extraordinary collection of homes on Long Island modeled after Georgian mansions, Cotswold-style cottages and French châteaux so inspired they were almost indistinguishable from the Château des Thons, an actual Louis XIV villa moved from France and reconstructed in Upper Brookville in 1927.
Among the properties included in the book are some of the North Shore’s most celebrated estates, such as Delano & Aldrich’s Oheka in Cold Spring Harbor for financier Otto Kahn – the second largest house ever built in the United States; John Russell Pope’s residential enclave, Caumsett, in Lloyd’s Neck for Marshall Field III; and John S. Phipps’ Westbury House, now operated as a non-profit foundation and museum, Westbury Gardens. At the same time, Mateyunas happily includes smaller and less well-known properties that are no less interesting architecturally, such as Delano & Aldrich’s stylish, flat-roofed Little Ipswich for interior designer Ruby Ross Wood and her husband in Woodbury and architect H. Pleasants Pennington’s Hedgerow, a charming villa intended as part of a community of low-maintenance houses abutting the Piping Rock Club.
The book strikes a nice balance between past and present, including extant properties, both privately owned and adaptively reused, and sadly lost houses, such as Paul Pennoyer’s Tudor home, Round Bush, in Locust Valley and the Fergusons’ Mediterranean castle, The Monastery, on Huntington Harbor, once furnished with rare art and antiques, including two 13th-century lion sculptures attributed to the Italian artist Guglialino. While the selection of houses produces a remarkable architectural array, some of the North Shore’s most magnificent houses, such as the monumental Harbor Hill, designed by McKim, Mead & White for Clarence MacKay with outbuildings by Warren & Wetmore, and C.P.H. Gilbert’s Meudon for William Guthrie in Lattingtown, are conspicuously absent.
Although Mateyunas’ detailed histories of each property remind us just how many exemplary designs have fallen victim to the wrecking ball, they also recount stories of preservation success. While more than two-thirds of the area’s great historic houses are now gone, many have been saved, sympathetically reused for a variety of purposes, and continue to be privately owned, such as Knole, Thomas Hastings’ masterpiece for Herman B. Duryea in Old Westbury. In some cases, they are still owned by the families who built them. Well researched with many anecdotal tales gathered from the descendants of the original owners, Mateyunas gives the estates a human dimension, allowing readers to glimpse the world they once were and, for a lucky few, still are. Readers gain something of an insider’s view from the beautiful archival photographs, many of which were culled from private collections, including Mateyunas’ own, and are for the first time being published.
It is primarily through the book’s abundant imagery, rather than the text, that the architectural creativity of the period leading up to the Depression is conveyed. Mateyunas’ well-chosen photographs reveal just how inventive the designs for these spacious suburban enclaves could be. Chelsea, the Benjamin Moore estate in Muttontown, displays one architect’s approach as he interpreted the houses of the Yangtze River and the farmhouses of Provence to produce for his clients a white stucco house with a corner tourelle surrounded by a moat on two sides. Perched over the water on Sand’s Point, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont’s castle, Beacon Towers – a Gothic interpretation – exhibits a different designer’s more fantastical design method. Interiors, as illustrated, could be as awe-inspiring as the Great Hall at Inisfada, the Brady house in Manhasset, or as unique as the diminutive front hall at Little Ipswich crowned with murals inspired by palazzos in Mantua. Well laid out gardens and ancillary buildings ranging from sports structures and airplane hangars to pavilions, private chapels and conservatories, such as Captain Joseph DeLamar’s monumental glass structure at Pembroke, were carried out with just as much zeal – if not more so – as the main house. And although the Depression and the war years may have diminished the over-the-top indulgence of the early 1900s, they did not dampen the spirit of the coterie of architects working on the North Shore. Mateyunas creates another layer of interest to the book by including several delightful and unexpected designs, such as Louis Greenleaf Adams’ Erchless (1931-35) for Howard Phipps and Wyeth & King’s stripped pavilion for Evelyn Marshall Field Suarez (1952), designed after the pivotal year of 1929.
North Shore Long Island: Country Houses, 1890-1950, is a testament to the skill and imagination of the savvy group of Beaux Arts-trained architects who gave rise to the rich architectural heritage of the area. As Mateyunas suggests, they were just as responsible as their wealthy and sophisticated clientele for shaping the evocative world that was the Gold Coast. And while its luster may have faded, the houses stand as one of the last vestiges of that magical moment in history; their enchanted beauty makes us stop to wonder and dream. 
Anne Walker is an architect who specializes in historic preservation at Peter Pennoyer Architects in New York City. Walker and Peter Pennoyer have co-authored a number of books, including The Architecture of Warren & Wetmore (W.W. Norton, 2006) and The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich (W.W. Norton, 2003).
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