Roslyn High School students Isabella Santos (left) and Hannah Bailey (right) unveil their paintings at the Mackay Estate. (Photo by Taylor Herzlich)
By Taylor Herzlich, June 17, 2024
The Roslyn Landmark Society unveiled four student paintings resembling stained glass windows to act as window coverings for the Mackay Estate Gate Lodge during restoration projects and presented a Roslyn High School student with a $1,000 scholarship during a ceremony Thursday.
“Thank you to all the students who worked so hard on this project,” said Mitchell Schwartz, a Roslyn Landmark Society trustee. “The work you did is something that’s going to be remembered by this community for a long time and it’s forever going to be etched into the history of this structure.”
Roslyn High School student and 2023 Gardiner Young Scholar recipient Isabella Santos helped lead the project.
Santos “has done so much work – it’s unbelievable,” Schwartz said.
The high schooler, who is also the daughter of Roslyn Landmark Society Co-President John Santos, dedicated 100 hours of service to the society to fulfill her scholarship. While she said it was the society that approached her with the idea to create student paintings for the windows, she said she took charge of the organization aspect, like securing art materials.
She also painted two of the four faux stained-glass windows. One of her paintings shows pink roses on a blue background through a painted window frame while the other shows blue, green and pink objects that resemble trees on a yellow background through a painted window frame.
Roslyn High School student Hannah Bailey was also involved in the project, painting a river flowing toward large green mountains and a blue sky through a window for her art piece.
Jaime Karbowiak, executive director of the Roslyn Landmark Society, presented Bailey with a $1,000 check for her contributions to the project.
Bailey “is the vice president of the Roslyn High School’s Art Club, and along with our Gardiner Young Scholar Isabella Santos, was instrumental in seeing the project through to completion,” Karbowiak said.
The landmark society and the Village of East Hills began restoration efforts on the estate in January 2022. The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, a non-profit focused on preserving Long Island history, awarded the Roslyn Landmark Society grant funding in December 2023 to replace the windows and doors.
The Roslyn Landmark Society then contacted the Roslyn School District with the idea to have student artists create paintings to temporarily cover the vacant windows, instead of leaving the building boarded up.
Following the replacement of the windows and doors, the Roslyn Landmark Society is planning to restore the slate roof, install new gutters and gates, update the landscaping, return the roof clock to the middle of the gate and create office and storage space.
The completed building will become a history resource center for the Village of East Hills, Roslyn School District and local residents, Roslyn Landmark Society Co-President Howard Kroplick said.
“It’s been my honor to work with the landmark society trying to preserve the estate,” East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to bring it back to what it used to look like.”
The estate – a 2,000 square-foot lodge designed in 1899 and built between 1900 to 1902 – was originally part of Clarence Mackay’s Harbor Hill Estate. Mackay inherited the Comstock silver fortune, from the first major discovery of silver in the United States.
In the late 1900s, the property, then known as Country Estates, included a large pool for club members.
Eventually, the pool club dissolved and the long-abandoned pool became an unauthorized and infamous skateboarding park. The pool was demolished in 2022.
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