Gatsby Mansion to be demolished

[dhermann1]

That's right, the mansion that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write the definitive Jazz Age novel is slated to be demolished, out on Long Island.
It's yours, if you can come up with 30 or 40 million bucks!
http://bestplaces.nydailynews.com/v...nth?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

That's really sad. Looks to be tastefully designed from what I see in the picture. Is there any effort under way to save it?

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

Another likely victim of the personal income tax.

 

[The Good]

This is too bad, and I hope that some effort is made to attempt preserving it. I'm surprised some highly wealthy individual isn't living there, though. Is this building particularly well known in Long Island?

 

[dhermann1]

As the article mentions there are hundreds of fine old mansions in that part of Long Island, all relics of bygone days. This is a grand house, but no grander than many others that have bit the dust. It would cost millions to put back into shape, as they mention. A real tragedy, but it seems inevitable.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

$4,500 bucks a day. Ouch. Yearly property tax around here isn't that much (well, on a house that big it'd be more than that) It's a shame when they tax an old place like this right off the map.

 

[Lady Day]

Aren't estates like that meant to be sort of convention centers in a way? A full staff for balls, and club gatherings, and fundraisers, stuff of that sort? Its not really just a 'home' even for the mega rich. A property like that also has to earn income. Maybe with the changes of the surrounding properties there just wasn't a way for it to do that any longer.

LD

 

[rumblefish]

I grew up walking distance from this house- walking distance when I was much younger.
There are still quite a few of these houses in Sands Point. This one is remarkable (besides it's history) in that it sits on land that juts out into Long Island Sound and it's pool, the edge is seen far right in the photo, is very close to the water. All of us around here used it as a reference point for fishing spots. Here is an arial veiw. http://www.neighborcity.com/property/30-Hoffstot-Ln-Port-Washington-NY-11050-2246663-4557292/

Next point of land over to the East is the Guggenheim Mansion, which is now part of the Sands Point Park and Perserve. While it's not as nicely situated as the 30 Hoffstot Lane, it is far grander in stucture size and property.
More about the area here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sands_Point,_New_York

Still, it is a shame to lose this. Port Washington (which Sands Point is a part of) continues look less and less like home. This house has been the back drop of some of my most memorable fishing nights.

 

[David Conwill]

I just hope every effort is made to salvage as much as possible. The idea of anything from that structure ending up in a landfill makes my skin crawl.

-Dave

 

[Edward]

Such a shame, to inspire the finest novel in the English language and then face the threat of being knocked down mere decades later.

Another likely victim of the personal income tax.

Avoiding any debate on the morality of taxation of income via inheritance, it was certainly death duties in the UK which led to big changes in the old Big Houses of the aristocracy. The English class structure was, at least until relatively recent times, still a pre-Marx concept in that one could be a member of the upper classes by matter of family history and yet not have two pennies to rub together, while mere merchants were often far wealthier, but would never have been considered more than lesser, working classes. Death duties were often, in the twentieth century, the final straw, as it were, and avoided by arrangements under which the ownership of the old house would pass to the National Trust, thereby avoiding paying the tax. The family would often retain a right of residence in a private wing of the property, while under the NT, the house would be opened up to the public. This has actually been a great thing for the preservation of many fine old buildings which, had they remained in private ownership, would no doubt have been knocked down years ago to make way for a more profitable housing or commercial development. I don't suppose there is any equivalent organisation in the US that would consider the same here? It becomes less special if there is a glut of such properties, I suppose, but surely there must be some way it can be profitably saved - upmarket B&B? - for its standing in the American literary canon.

 

[David Conwill]

Edward,

There’s nothing so centralized as the National Trust (though we do have a National Trust for Historic Preservation that lobbies Congress and owns a few buildings), but there are a variety of historic preservation groups and mechanisms of which property owners can avail themselves if they want to save a building. Funding, especially right now, remains a challenge.

Unfortunately, you have to want to save the building. The almighty dollar usually wins out when the underlying real estate is so inherently valuable for redevelopment.

-Dave

 

[Guttersnipe]

The UK's NT is certainly a remarkable organization. I've heard that, considering the common illiquid "house poor" status of many old English aristocratic families, lots of old estates fell into pretty bad states of ill-repair before the NT was around. It sounds like in this the case of the Gatsby house, this is exactly what happened.

While I appreciate the aesthetic, cultural, and historical value of the structure, the idea of a private home which requires $4,500 per/day to maintain is frankly rather obscene, to my sense of propriety anways.

 

[dhermann1]

I doubt that it's $4,500 every day. It must be that to use the space, you have to spend that amount for like a few days. Or something. I mean that works out to $1,642,500 for a whole year. [huh]

 

[scottyrocks]

The acreage is also a factor. Property taxes on Long Island are among the highest in the nation, not that I'm proud of it - I'm not. Youd have to have a pretty darn good business reason for undertaking such a property, aside from the love of famous old mansions.

 

[Paisley]

From the Newsday.com article, "Now, the front door is off its hinges, wood floors have been torn up for salvage, windows are missing and the two-story Doric columns are unsteady....[The owner] put it up for sale in 2006 for $30 million." And, "Sands Point Village in January approved plans to raze the house and divide the site into lots for five custom homes starting at $10 million each....Sands Point Village Trustee Katharine Ullman, who lives near Lands End, at first opposed the subdivision, saying it would increase traffic, disturb a creek and tear down a navigation landmark for sailors. But now, 'I understand the problem', she said. 'It was costly to make the repairs to make it livable'."

The owners are having to pay property tax and insurance on a house they can't live in and haven't been able to sell for five years. Sad to say, but if I were the owner of such a money pit, I'd probably do what they're doing.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

This is happening even here with costs. We looked at buying a series of buildings across the street, a former bar, to use as a shooting range for our gun store. The utilities alone are $2,000 a month, the place needs a complete remodel, there are some questionable structural issues, not to mention property tax. The sale price is next to nothing, it was foreclosed on after a murder happened outside and the place has been sitting vacant and up for sale for a couple of years.

Utilities, property tax, and upkeep will be the demise of many historic places to come.

 

[Tomasso]

I find the owner's story somewhat specious.

" He bought Lands End for $17.5 million in 2004......with plans to live there, but his family objected. He put it up for sale in 2006 for $30 million. "

Were I a cynic .......I'd venture to say that he never planned to live on the property.......He let it lay dormant for two years......then put it on the market making sure it was so drastically overpriced that it would be sure not to sell.......then pleads hardship to the town fathers.....and wins the zoning approval for subdivision which willl turn his $17.5m into $50-70m in around a ten year hold. That's an excellent real estate play in any market, especially this one..........that's if I were a cynic....





That said, although the home is situated on a nice piece of property (and has a possible connection to a great novel) it is hardly one of America's great homes.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I doubt that it's $4,500 every day. It must be that to use the space, you have to spend that amount for like a few days. Or something. I mean that works out to $1,642,500 for a whole year. [huh]

I'll put my accountant's hat . . . err, vintage green visor shade. . . for a second. $4,500/day for up keep was the figure quoted in the article, which comes out to $1,620,000 (12 months averaging 30 days). If you do the math, that's only 9.3% of the last sale price, 5.4% asking price for the house + land, and 3.2% of what the land is likely assessed at. Considering that the upkeep cited in the article includes property tax, insurance, and baseline utilities, I'm actually surprised it's not more.

 

[Mike in Seattle]

But there are several Long Island mansions that someone claims was "the" mansion that F. Scott Fitzgerald used for his idea of what Gatsby's mansion was, Oheka Castle being the most often suggested. Oheka is currently used as Boris' house on Royal Pains, and parts were filmed to be part of Xanadu in Citizen Kane. Frankly, I think it's more of a P/R gag when selling a house, or trying to get funding to restore or convert a great home.

 

[Paisley]

Regardless of the owner's intent, I don't see any particular crime in taking a property that's going to rack and ruin, that would be incredibly expensive to repair and maintain, and turn the property into something that someone is willing to pay for, and sounds like it will fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. (Hundreds of properties there have gone the same way.)