HBO's The Gilded Age, East Hills, Clarence Mackay's Harbor Hill Estate, the Mackay Estate Gate Lodge and Stanford White
By Greg Oreiro
HBO's excellent new series 'The Gilded Age' has many connections, real and fictional, to NYC, Long Island and the Vanderbilt family. If you've yet to see it, and are a regular reader here, this new series is highly recommended.
While it is a fictional series detailing the rise and acceptance of a 'new money' family, The Russells, into the 'old money' guard of the gilded age society of New York, there are plenty of factual characters and locations within the show to keep any history aficionado happily entertained.
In this post, we'll look at one of the show's real-life characters, architect Stanford White.
In the new series, real-life character Stanford White is convincingly played by John Sanders and does bear a striking resemblance to White himself.
In the show, set in 1882, White has just designed and built the fictional Russell's new mansion on 61st St and 5th Ave. Only fictional, as no such mansion sat on that corner, it does look like a structure that would have come out of White's mind and pen.
Born in New York City on November 9, 1853, the real Stanford White was responsible for many well-known gilded age mansions and structures in and around New York, Newport R.I., and elsewhere in the country.
As was the case of many architects of the day, White did not have any formal architectural schooling, but at age 18, he started as an apprentice for Henry Hobson Richardson for the following 6 years.
In September 1879, after a one and half year long trip through Europe learning differing styles, he began as a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms of the era. Dozens of White's creations are still standing today.
In 1899, he received his largest private residence commission, the 648-acre estate Harbor Hill, designed and built for Katherine and Clarence H. Mackay on the highest point in Nassau County seen here in 1922.
Seen above are from Stanford White's original plans for the lodge.
Built on a large mountain of a hill of the same name in Roslyn, the Harbor Hill estate proudly stood for 45 years and has seen the likes of visitors like Charles Lindbergh after his Trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, The Prince of Wales in 1924, and even a future Pope when Cardinal Pacelli visited in the 1920's.
Demolished in 1947, after arsonists and vandals started to take their toll when Mackay died in 1938, very little of Harbor Hill exists today. Other than the Dairy man's cottage, water tower and some recently rediscovered driveway retaining walls, the largest remaining piece of the estate is the gate lodge on Harbor Hill Road and Roslyn Road. The rest of the estate's acreage is covered by the 500-house neighborhood of Country Estates at East Hills.
The gate lodge is a miniature version of the main limestone house. It is currently going through a comprehensive restoration undertaken by the Village of East Hills with the assistance of the Roslyn Landmark Society.
1 Comments
It brings joy to my heart to read this, preservation and appreciation has its finest hour; recognition in some capacity to gave the area the title of "Gold Coast" in every sense of the word. We should all be so proud of that heritage that took place so close to where we live.