Mill Neck Manor (Estate of Lillian Sefton Dodge)

Mill Neck Manor, one of the Gold Coast's most impressive mansions, sits on 86 acres overlooking Long Island Sound. The expansive home is the former residence of Robert Leftwich Dodge and his wife, Lillian Sefton Dodge, a cosmetic heiress and executive of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, a well-known cosmetics and fragrance manufacturer in the early twenetieth century. The granite Tudor Revival mansion consists of 34 rooms and overlooks Long Island Sound. The home is distinguished by elaborate stained glass featuring stories from Shakespeare as well as doors at the main entrance that are 400 to 500 years old. The home cost $2 million to build, a remarkable figure for the time.

Lillian Sefton Dodge apparently formed a connection to Harriet Hubbard Ayer when she appeared in a production with Ayer's daughter, as both young women were singers. Ayer eventually lost control of the company to a business partner, but regained it after a legal battle. The negative press garnered by the court case apparently caused sales to drop, however, and Ayer eventually sold the company to Benjamin Thomas in 1907. Thomas purchased the company for his wife, who was Lillian Sefton. Although Thomas was the company's president, it was Sefton who actually ran the business, and when he died in 1918, she became the highest paid female executive in the United States. In 1925, she married her second husband, Robert Leftwich Dodge, an artist.

In 1949, Dodge sold the estate to the Lutheran Friends of the Deaf. The organization became the founder of the Mill Neck Family of Organizations and began using the manor as a residential facility for the deaf. It later expanded and offered a day elementary school as well. A new Deaf Education Center was built on the grounds in 2001 and since that time, the manor has been used primarily for organized tours, private events, and photography shoots.

After the construction of the new center, the manor was not used on a regular basis and a thorough restoration of the home began in 2016. The estate was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Discover Long Island . Accessed April 18th 2021. https://www.discoverlongisland.com/member/mill-neck-manor-house/.

Lillian Sefton Dodge Relatives Visit Mill Neck Manor , Mill Neck . February 21st 2018. Accessed April 18th 2021. https://millneck.org/lillian-sefton-dodge-relatives-visit-mill-neck-manor/.

Fauci, Jennifer . Sefton Manor/Mill Neck Manor , Long Island Weekly . March 28th 2016. Accessed April 18th 2021. https://longislandweekly.com/sefton-manor-mill-neck-manor/.