The Mackay Estate Gate Lodge, sitting at the corner of Harbor Hill Road and Roslyn Road, is a building many people in Roslyn or East Hills have driven past for years, sometimes not quite knowing what it was. The entrance to Clarence Mackay's Harbor Hill estate and designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White was built between 1900 and 1902. This structure was meant to be a small version of the main house. Built in stone, with the same steep slate roof, it was designed so that that anyone viewing it from the public road would understand what to expect as they ascended the hill before they saw the main structure. The grand main house, fashioned after the Palace of Versailles, was demolished in 1947, and the Lodge is one of only three buildings from the estate still standing.
Following the destruction of the main house, from about 1970 to 2008, it was the Country Estates Swim Club, and after that it sat behind overgrowth while new houses went up around it. Dr. Roger Gerry, who founded the Roslyn Landmark Society, called it the most important structure in East Hills, and it was listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1991. The Village of East Hills acquired the Lodge in 2017 when a developer purchased the land. The deed passed to the Village in December 2021, and on January 25, 2022 the restoration began with the Roslyn Landmark Society guiding the work. Since then the trees and debris and graffiti have come away from the limestone, and new windows and doors have gone in with help from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, and the New York State Council of the Arts.
This year, we're soaring to new heights as the work reaches to the top of the building. Beginning this winter, work will begin the removal of every slate tile. Each one will be meticulously removed by hand and stored while the roof structure underneath is rebuilt. The original slate roofing tile will then be re-installed, with any replacements being sourced from the same vein of slate in the Northeast. The copper gutters and finials are being brought back to life, and the clock that sat in the roof above the gates, missing for more than sixty-five years, is being recreated by our historic designer, John Collins, from the original architectural drawings. A historic marker from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation is being manufactured now, and the Village of East Hills will install it when it arrives.
That marker is how this series began. When applying for a marker, The Pomeroy Foundation asks for primary sources, and the date the Roslyn Landmark Society wanted on the marker, 1899, needed documentation. This summer, we went looking at the New-York Historical Society, which holds the office files of McKim, Mead & White, and came home with several hundred photographs of letters, bills, estimates, pay sheets and pictures - most of which have never been published. Starting next Saturday, and roughly every two weeks after that, we will share them here, in an attempt to tell the story of the Mackay Estate Gate Lodge.
An anonymous donor is matching every new gift to our Mackay Estate Gate Lodge fundraising campaign, It's Time to Give. This donor is matching dollar for dollar, up to $28,000, for the Gate Lodge's slate roof, its copper gutters and finials, and the clock above the gates. A gift of any size counts twice until the match is met. You can give at roslynlandmarks.org/itstimetogive.
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