3 GOLD COAST MANSIONS OF LONG ISLAND EVERYONE MUST VISIT

If you’re looking for travel things to do on Long Island, then here are 3 Gold Coast Mansions of Long Island everyone must visit. I love love love mansions! Each one of these gems will take at least a full day to explore! Also, deserves more than one visit I must add. The sights are wonderful, and stepping onto these ground you will definitely feel like royalty, the old money kind – an amazing feeling to have.

This post is all about 3 Gold Coast Mansions of Long Island.

GOLD COAST MANSION 1: VANDERBILT MUSEUM & PLANETARIUM

The elegant Vanderbilt Mansion, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a time machine that takes visitors back to Gold Coast life of the 1920s through 1940s. William K. Vanderbilt II’s (1878-1944) natural-history and artifact collections galleries are located in the 24-room Mansion. The Turntable Gallery exhibits his 1928 Lincoln touring car, a rare 1909 Reo Gentleman’s Roadster, and memorabilia from the legendary Vanderbilt Cup Races. Also, you will discover the visual wonders of the Reichert Planetarium, where their Konica Minolta Infinium star projector and full-dome video transport visitors across the universe.

Tour the grounds on your own and bring a lunch basket! However, the Mansion tour is a guided tour that takes you through the living quarters of the Mansion, which you cannot see without a tour. Guides provide historical information about the house, the Vanderbilt family, and its famous guests. On a tour, you will see Mr. Vanderbilt’s considerable collection of fine and decorative art, and antique furnishings purchased during his travels around the world.

Mr. Vanderbilt’s oceanic expeditions and unprecedented circumnavigations of the globe make it possible for visitors to journey around the planet without leaving Long Island. His specimen-hunting trips to the Galápagos Islands, throughout the Pacific, Asia, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean, yielded thousands of specimens of marine, bird, and insect life, some of them new discoveries at the time Vanderbilt found them.

 

GOLD COAST MANSION 2: OLD WESTBURY GARDENS

Old Westbury Gardens, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the former home of John S. Phipps, his wife, Margarita Grace Phipps, and their four children. Completed in 1906 by the English designer, George A. Crawley, the magnificent Charles II-style mansion is nestled amid 200 acres of formal gardens, landscaped grounds, woodlands, ponds, and lakes. The Westbury House is furnished with fine English antiques and decorative arts from the more than fifty years of the family’s residence.

If you prefer self-guided tours, then you will surely enjoy this – due to COVID-19 protocols, there are only self-guided tours of the Westbury House. However, there is a limited capacity of visitors inside the building, and face coverings are required for all visitors, regardless of vaccination status. Staff at Westbury House will explain to visitors the admission procedures.

Explore the country home of John and Margarita Phipps and their four children at your own pace. The Phippss’ carefully designed and curated home reveals their deep love for art and design, from architecture and landscape to their impressive personal collection of art and antiques.

 

GOLD COAST MANSION 3: PLANTING FIELDS ARBORETUM STATE HISTORIC PARK

Planting Fields, which is included in the National Register of Historic Places, is a magnificent Gold Coast estate from the 1920s, which survives today as a statement about art, architecture, and landscape.  Located in Oyster Bay, New York, and originally landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers, the grounds feature 409 acres of greenhouses, rolling lawns, formal gardens, woodland paths, and outstanding plant collections.

Planting Fields is one of only a few surviving estates on Long Island with its original acreage intact, as well as its buildings, including Coe Hall, a 65-room Tudor Revival mansion designed by architects Alexander Walker and Leon Gillette. It was created beginning in 1913 by William Robertson Coe and his second wife, Mai Rogers Coe, heiress and daughter of Standard Oil partner Henry Huttleston Rogers. Born in England into modest circumstances, W.R. Coe made his fortune in the U.S. as chairman of a large marine insurance company.

The interior of the house is a showcase of artistry and craftsmanship and features a distinctly American aesthetic through original ironwork commissions by Samuel Yellin and murals painted by artists Robert Winthrop Chanler and Everett Shinn.  Nearly a thousand such estates were built after the Civil War through about 1940, making this area the largest concentration of large estates anywhere in the U.S. Just under 60% of them survive today; about 400 are in residential use, most on reduced size lots. Planting Fields was one of the last of these estates to be created.

 

Have you ever been? Do you plan to visit? Which is your favorite? Let me know in the comments!

Happy exploring 🖤

 

This post is all about 3 Gold Coast Mansions of Long Island.