Once boasting 600-plus lavish mansion-estates, the “Gold Coast” of Long Island’s North Shore, inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic The Great Gatsby, glittered through the Jazz Age before finally fading in the 1950s.
Reacting to the demolition wave of the 1960s, Monica Randall and her sister, then teenagers, became the “Gold Coast Rescue Team.” Cameras and notebooks in hand, they haunted abandoned estates on horseback. Climbing crumbling staircases and sliding down coal chutes, they documented the crumbling piles ahead of the bulldozers while carrying off silken gowns, hats and other items from attics and steamer trunks.
With Gatsby-esque elements to her own life, Randall—author, preservationist, location scout and speaker—remains a most engaging authority on this bygone era.
“Improbable-sounding but true, much Gold Coast lore was about outdoing the neighbors,” says Randall, who supplied fashions for and appeared in the 1974 Gatsby movie. “At one party, polar bear-costumed staff went up in hot-air balloons and pitched coconut snowballs to the children below. Never to be repeated, that era provided enough entertainment to keep writers busy for 100 years.”
While most surviving estates now serve institutional uses, some dance on, like perennial planner favorite Glen Cove Mansion Hotel and Conference Center. Formerly the 1910 Manor House, the IACC-certified 187-room retreat is offering its “Roaring 20s Meeting Package” through early September.
Minutes away in Oyster Bay, Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, a former estate that includes the 65-room Coe Hall mansion, is a gorgeous option for events. At the Muttontown Preserve in East Norwich, the 1924 honeymoon-inspired Chelsea Mansion is ready-made for weddings and receptions.
Set on 200 acres and featuring a 44-room mansion filled with art and antiques, the superbly preserved Old Westbury Gardens from 1906 is a must for tours, and offers rental space at its 19th-century Orchard Hill farmhouse. Outdoor sculpture and indoor art are the draws at the event-capable Nassau County Museum of Art, set on the 145-acre former Frick Estate in Roslyn Harbor.
America’s second all-time largest private residence behind the Biltmore in North Carolina, Huntington’s Oheka Castle Hotel & Estate from 1919 is now an exquisitely restored 32-room hotel, popular with weddings, galas and corporate retreats.
