Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s great-grandson is looking to sell the Old Westbury property, which is the last remaining piece of the family’s North Shore estate

By
Candace Taylor
Updated March 26, 2021 2:05 pm ET

In the early 1900s, the wealthy family of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney owned roughly a thousand acres on the North Shore of Long Island. The sprawling estate included a McKim, Mead & White-designed mansion, a horse stable with 83 stalls, a tennis house with an indoor pool and an art studio for Mrs. Whitney, a sculptor who founded New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

Over the years, the Whitneys demolished the mansion and sold off bits and pieces of the property; the stable is part of the campus of New York Institute of Technology, and the tennis house is part of a country club. Now the family is selling the last remaining piece of the original estate: The art studio, a circa 1912, Palladian-style structure with its own formal gardens and swimming pool. It will list for $4.75 million.

In the 1980s, the family added to the structure to convert it to a five-bedroom, roughly 7,000-square-foot home. The original studio space and gardens remain almost entirely intact, however, down to the dolphin-shaped door handles.

They are hoping a buyer will continue to preserve the structure, which sits on about 6 acres. “It’s 100 years that we have kept this thing going,” says John LeBoutillier, Mrs. Whitney’s 67-year-old great-grandson who owns the property with his sister, Susan S. Humes. “We’d like someone to come along and keep it going for another 100 years.”

A descendant of robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gertrude Vanderbilt was born into one of the country’s wealthiest families, and married into another one: Her husband, Harry Payne Whitney, was also heir to a fortune.

Mrs. Whitney was a sculptor: her best-known works include the Titanic Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Christopher Columbus memorial in Huelva, Spain. Also a leading arts patron, she offered her collection of works by American artists to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; when it was declined, she founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1930.

Entryway

Constructed around 1912, Mrs. Whitney's studio has 20-foot-high ceilings and a north-facing skylight. Many of Mrs. Whitney's sculptures are on display in the space. EPM Real Estate Photography

Living room

The family now uses the original studio space as a living and dining room. EPM Real Estate Photography

Dining area

Mrs. Whitney used a trap door-- now concealed under a rug-- to transport her sculptures to the kiln.

EPM Real Estate Photography

Kitchen

The studio originally had only a kitchenette. A new, larger kitchen was part of an addition to the structure in the 1980s. EPM Real Estate Photography

The Whitneys, who married in 1896, lived primarily in New York City and used their Long Island estate as a country home. They hired architects Delano & Aldrich to design an art studio a short distance away from their main house. The workspace—now used as a living and dining room—has 20-foot-high ceilings and a massive north-facing skylight to provide the ideal sculpting conditions, Mr. LeBoutillier explains. He points out a hook hanging from the ceiling which Ms. Whitney used to lower her creations through a trap door into the cellar, where they were loaded onto carts and pulled by pony through a 100-foot-long tunnel to the kilns.

The studio wasn’t just a work space. Inspired by an Italian villa, the building had a limestone facade, multiple bedrooms and reception rooms for entertaining. It also served as Mrs. Whitney’s refuge from an unhappy marriage, Mr. LeBoutillier says; he believes his great-grandmother had numerous extramarital affairs. “Gertrude was very avant-garde,” he explains in a posh Locust Valley Lockjaw (“toe-mah-toes”).

The studio was also the scene of wild parties frequented by the likes of Albert Einstein, he says. For one soiree, the Whitneys emptied out the swimming pool to make space for two kangaroos.

The studio has its own swimming pool and formal gardens.

Photo: EPM Real Estate Photography

Mr. LeBoutillier, a writer and commentator who served one term in Congress, frequently gives tours of his home to various groups, so his explanations are well-practiced; he deftly rattles off the names of the artists whose works are on display in the home alongside Mrs. Whitney’s, including Charles Baskerville and Robert Winthrop Chanler.

On an early spring morning, Mr. LeBoutillier wears a blue sweater over a red polo shirt, brown corduroys, and a navy pea coat. He recounts how he came to live in the house: When his father died in the late 1970s, his mother decided she wanted to live in the studio. No one had used it since his great-grandmother died in the 1940s, although as a child he occasionally visited to swim in the pool.

“She loved it over here,” Mr. LeBoutillier says of his mother. “It’s a beautiful place and it was allowed to go to hell. And she saw the potential to bring it back to the way it was. I guess she remembered it from her youth.”

Bedroom

The mural on the wall in this bedroom is by Charles Baskerville. EPM Real Estate Photography

The LeBoutilliers turned one of the reception rooms into a replica of Mrs. Whitney’s bedroom in her Paris home. They used furniture of Mrs. Whitney's that had been storage, including her bed, chaise, desk and even a letter opener. EPM Real Estate Photography

Staircase

The building’s main stairwell was originally adorned by a brightly colored mural including a portrait of Mrs. Whitney. The artist was her friend Howard Gardiner Cushing. The original was removed at the Cushing family’s request and replaced by a copy. EPM Real Estate Photography

Staircase

The Cushing mural is 73 feet long. EPM Real Estate Photography

Mrs. LeBoutillier added a wing on either side of the original studio structure to make it function as a home; one of the wings contains a large, modern kitchen. But she was careful to make the new sections blend seamlessly into the original.

“Everything was done to keep it in the spirit of the studio, but to make it a living house,” says Mr. LeBoutillier, who moved in along with his mother in 1982.

The LeBoutilliers left the interiors virtually untouched; details like the dolphin door handles and hand-wrought iron decorative screens are intact. On the second floor in what was Mrs. Whitney’s bedroom, the walls are still covered in the original black-and-gold mural by Mr. Chanler. The adjoining bathroom still has Ms. Whitney’s sunken bathtub tiled in greenish blue, as well as the original sink, toilet and even her soap dish. A narrow spiral staircase leads from the second floor, through the back of a closet on the main floor, and down to the cellar; what Ms. Whitney used it for is unclear.

The house “really is a living museum,” says listing agent Paul Mateyunas of Douglas Elliman; he anticipates that the purchase will be “an emotional sale.”

In the room that was once Mrs. Whitney’s bedroom, the walls are still covered in the original black-and-gold mural by Robert Winthrop Chanler. Photo: EPM Real Estate Photography

A bathroom has Mrs. Whitney’s original sunken bathtub, sink and toilet. Photo: EPM Real Estate Photography

The building’s main stairwell was originally adorned by a brightly colored, 73-foot-long mural, which includes an image of Mrs. Whitney. The artist was her friend Howard Gardiner Cushing, who Mr. LeBoutillier believes was also her lover. The original was removed at the Cushing family’s request and replaced by a copy.

Outside, the swimming pool is surrounded by gardens; water flows from a fountain to the pool by an aqueduct. The grounds also include a two-bedroom caretakers’ cottage.

The house also serves as a display space for Whitney and Vanderbilt family memorabilia; the walls are covered with black-and-white photos of the stylishly dressed Mrs. Whitney as well as other family members. On a table in the living rooms sits a photo of Mr. LeBoutillier’s younger sister with Mick Jagger, a friend of the family. The LeBoutilliers turned one of the reception rooms into a replica of Mrs. Whitney’s bedroom in her Paris home, using furniture of hers that had been in storage: There is a bed draped in a baby-blue canopy, a chaise and a desk complete with Mrs. Whitney’s tape dispenser and letter opener.

Mr. LeBoutillier says he’s not sure what will happen to the furniture and art when the studio is sold. He hopes that whoever buys the house will continue to preserve it, perhaps as a museum or an art space, and will want to keep some of the artifacts in place. “My mother said, ‘John, we live in the most special place, we ought to share it,’” he recalls. “So we’d like to find someone to buy it in that spirit, who would keep it going and honor her, and art.”

As for himself, he now lives alone in the building with his cat, Plumley, and he’s ready to pass the job of preserving the property on to someone else. “It’s time,” he says. “It really is time.”

Write to Candace Taylor at [email protected]