Friday, March 11, 2011

Farewell to a grand Long Island home

From Newsday:

The once-grand white house watches over Long Island Sound from the tip of Sands Point, its days numbered.

Lands End, the 25-room Colonial Revival mansion that local lore says was F. Scott Fitzgerald's inspiration for Daisy Buchanan's home in "The Great Gatsby" faces demolition this month.

In the 1920s and '30s, Winston Churchill, the Marx Brothers and Ethel Barrymore attended parties there. Fitzgerald was perched on the back deck, drinking in the view. Rooms featured marble, parquet and wide wood-planked floors, Palladian windows and hand-painted wallpaper.

Now, the front door is off its hinges, wood floors have been torn up for salvage, windows are missing and the two-story Doric columns are unsteady.

Sands Point Village in January approved plans to raze the house and divide the site into lots for five custom homes starting at $10 million each.

Lands End is the latest Gold Coast estate to fall. With each demolition, the North Shore loses more of its gilded past, when sea breezes and social events attracted the rich and famous. Historians say hundreds of the mansions have been lost in the past 50 years as owners faced increasing taxes and high maintenance costs.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Taxes, insurance and maintenance of $4,500 a day is total BS.
Most the property is lawn including behind the house all the way down to the water.

This is all about builder greed and waterfront property. I been in the house it was never as bad as the builder owner says.
The rear deck was a little soggy that's about it.
A common practice on the N Shore is to make holes on a roof, leave windows open and damaged all the down spouts to insure severe water damage.
Its all the corrupt Sands Point Committee wanted to hear and believe.

Anonymous said...

What a crying shame.

Joe said...

I'm applaud by how much damage was done to that house in such a short time. I'm sure it was deliberate

More bad news the builder is targeting Iranian doctors from N Shore hospital.
These "colonists" hate Americans and like to colonize. They demand the most hideous looking things you can imagine, drive like maniacs and are as nasty as its gets.
To tell you the truth I like Beacon Hill better, Sands Point has become all jerks and stuffys who deserve what they are getting

North Shore LIJ hospital ruined all of N Hempstead (East and west Egg peninsulas) with these Persian and Russian doctors.
When you go out on a boat the Great Neck and Sands Point shoreline no longer looks like America.
"World class Architects" my ass

Anonymous said...

The 'rich' can do what ever they want. History has never stood in the way of their own profit exception being when thoes same 'rich' can use history to keep poor people from a profit. 'The Golden Rules', thoes with the gold make the rules.

Anonymous said...

Just another chapter in history folks.

The nouveau riche have always their own architectural styles that they prefer...gaudy-glitz!

The sedate classic proportions of the past stand in their way.

Think of all those colonial era and graceful ante-bellum homes that were torn down in America to be replaced by overdecorated gingerbread encrusted late Victorian homes of the post Civil War period.

Those old robber barons who built them had similar tastes as the ostentatious Bukharians who have razed most of the 1920s Cord Meyer area of Forest Hills.

Time for us to say a prayer then move ahead before our grief for the gone forever with the wind disables us.

georgetheatheist said...

"Robber Barons"?

I prefer "Captains of Industry".

Bukharian said...

Repost: Stupid lazy Americans, you had the same opportunity to work the system you didn't use it.
We Bukharians pool our money, hustle, make the most use of land.

We will own everything using your own money, banks, insurance company's and laws as you continue to die out in your stupid old houses.
The last person you see before you go lights out in the hospital will likely be Bukharian so you better play nice.

Anonymous said...

"Sands Point has become all jerks and stuffys who deserve what they are getting."

Carlos Beltran of the Mets lives there...go figure.

Anonymous said...

Who cares..Military men and women soldiers are dying for your profits

Joe said...

Carlos who ?
Met's don't count they always lose.
Really I don't know of any Mexicans owning property in Sands Point.
There isn't a cantina, rib or chicken shack for miles.
Its mostly Wall street thieves, dentists and lawyers.
You can catch them at LaMotta's sipping Vodka Martinis on Saturday night

Anonymous said...

For pix of the house (including the holes made on the roof) and its inside go here.

http://www.jenrossphoto.com/#Portfolio/Spaces/East%20Egg/48

Anonymous said...

And now its real estate listing photos from a couple years ago
http://curbed.com/archives/2011/03/10/gatsby-house-really-old-listing-photos-reveal-former-grandeur.php#lands-end-old-listing-8

Anonymous said...

How about low-life lieutenants George?

Anonymous said...

Maybe you Bhuks deal in conflict..BLOOD...diamonds to raise your cash!

Low life barbarians.

Even you don't possess enough $$$$$ to buy a nation so be content with Al Natan.

an ashamed Bukharian said...

My people were ignorant sheep herders living in cottages on the steep slopes of the steppes before they came to America.

Now they live in grand homes but they still think with the brains of a mountain goat.

Anonymous said...

I think it's more like "Or Natan" (our nation) located at Kasiev's (king of the cossacks) destroyed former Trylon Theater on Queens Blvd.

Anonymous said...

Whenever an immigrant group makes more money than the predominant group, everyone has to come in and say OH THEY MSUT BE DOING ILLEGAL but if it's an all american white person they say OH LOOK HOW SUCCESSFUL AND SMART HE IS and they don't think twice about it. Sorry to say majority of the CEOs who helped contribute to bring on this recession were WHITE!!! Some people seem to be possessed by the green eyed monster that is jealousy O.O