Attended a great wine dinner last night at the Glen Cove Mansion Hotel & Conference Center in Long Island, NY, featuring a rapturous presentation from author Monica Randall on the fabled Gatsby-era mansions and estates of Long Island's North Shore. After the crash of '29, most were abandoned and left to decay before being unceremoniously bulldozed in the 1960s. One such casualty, featured here, was Beacon Towers, a surreal Norman fantasy built by the Vanderbilts and thought to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's inspiration for Jay Gatsby's fictional mansion.
Yet, a young Monica and her sister were determined to preserve what they could, and with camera and notebook in hand, they climbed crumbling walls and slid down coal chutes to create a spellbinding record of America's aristocratic past, complete with murder and the occult. One mansion was paved with tombstones taken from the graves of small children in Europe; another, the scene of a shotgun killing in the 50s, had a driveway cobbled with stones from the site of Mary Queen of Scots' beheading.
They also salvaged a remarkable collection of gowns and other finery left abandoned in steamer trunks. The elegant and charming Monica played a flapper in the 1974 film version of the Great Gatsby, lived in F.W. Woolworth's haunted Winfield Hall, still scouts locations for movies, and is still a dedicated explorer and adventurer. In fact, she's off in search of Catskills' ruins today--a favorite haunt of ours, to be featured in later entries.
3 comments:
A very interesting piece on a long-forgotten edifice. Where does the photo come from? The Great Gatsby is a very important novel, and anything remotely connected to it should be chronicled and if possible save, if not in reality, then at least in archives.
The photo was part of the slideshow presentation given by Monica Randall--she is a treasure unto herself, as skilled a presenter as you will find in any realm, and a real trove of information. She may have photographed the castle (demolished in 1945) herself--I will check.
I doubt if Monica would be flattered by the 1945 comment--she was a mere tot at the time!
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