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Westbury House & Gardens

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

Among the well-heeled families that lived on Long Island's Gold Coast in its heyday, the Phippses are perhaps the most significant to the area. Several members of the extended Phipps family owned estates on the island. The Westbury mansion was built by John Phipps and his wife, Margarita, in 1906. The 44-room mansion and lavish gardens have been featured in several films, including North by Northwest. The estate is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Images

Westbury House

Plant, Property, Sky, Building

The mansion's salvaged dining room

Furniture, Table, Chair, Lighting

The gardens, viewed from the home

Plant, Cloud, Sky, Tree

The mansion's Collyweston tile roof

Sky, Building, Cloud, Brickwork

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

In the heyday of Long Island's Gold Coast, when it was home to perhaps the greatest concentration of wealth in the United States, few families could compare to the Phippses for the opulence of their numerous homes. Old Westbury House and Gardens was the home of John Phipps, an heir to the family fortune, and his wife, Margarita. Phipps reportedly promised his wife that he would build her an estate to rival any of the classical estates of England.

The Phipps enlisted English designer George A. Crawley to design the home, a sprawling, 44-room George II-style home. The mansion sits on 200 acres of formal gardens and landscaped grounds. The home was completed in 1906, with additions made in 1911 and 1924. One of the more interesting features of the home is its dining room, which was salvaged from Henry Phipps's mansion in Manhattan before its demolition, brought to Long Island and assembled in Westbury House.

When John and Margarita Phipps died in the 1950s, their daughter inherited the estate and established a foundation to preserve the home and gardens and open them to the public. The home has been a museum since 1959. The estate has been featured in numerous films and television shows, including North by Northwest and Love Story.

In 2019, Westbury House had a new roof installed. This was no ordinary roof; the original roof was made of Collyweston slate, an English tile that was prized for years because of its golden yellow color. Though the tile was relatively common on English country estates as well buildings at Oxford, it was virtually unheard of in the United States. By the 2000s, however, all of the Collyweston mines were shuttered, and Westbury's roof was in sad shape. In 2016, one mine began producing the tile, and the laborious process of reroofing Westbury was featured in the New York Times.

Sources

Gill, John Freeman . For a Roof in Old Wesbury, NY, a Singular Slate from England , New York Times . December 20th 2019. Accessed April 10th 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/realestate/old-westbury-gardens-slate-from-england.html.

Hanson, Conrad . The Phipps Family and Their Fabulous Long Island Estates , Schoolfield Country Houses . Accessed April 10th 2021. https://www.schoolfieldcountryhouse.com/the-house/2020/4/1/the-phipps-family-and-their-fabulous-long-island-estates.

Old Westbury Gardens , Discover Long Island . Accessed April 10th 2021. https://www.discoverlongisland.com/member/old-westbury-gardens/.

Additional Information