From The Days Of Gatsby: The Fallen Homes Of Long Island's Gold Coast

Harbor Hill

Harbor Hill was not technically on the Gold Coast, but located in what is now considered Roslyn, New York. However, it is definitely still worthy of our list. The spectacular mansion was commissioned in 1899 as a wedding gift for Clarence Hungerford Mackay, the son of the Comstock Lode magnate who left him an estimated $500 million at his death in 1902. His wife Katharine Duer Mackay was the brains behind the design modeled after Chateau de Maisons, the Parisian royal building. The home sat on the highest point in Nassau County on 688 acres of Roslyn Harbor real estate, with pristine views of the Long Island Sound, which we know Jay Gatsby would have appreciated. The house included 6 formal terraces and gardens and a 70-acre farm.  In its heyday, the property hosted a grand party for the Prince of Wales (who became King Edward VIII) and the homecoming party for Charles Lindbergh upon his return from Europe. The stock market crash devastated the family fortune in 1929, Katharine died from cancer in 1930, and the mansion was closed in 1933. When he died in 1938, in his 5th Avenue residence, he left the property to his son, but not the means to maintain such a grand home. The property leased 50 acres to the US Army Air Corps for what later became known as the Roslyn Air Force Station, as the buildings fell into disrepair. The entire structure was dynamited in 1947, but the fountain of the four equestrian men was preserved in Kansas City's Country Club Plaza. Today, a community known as The Country Estates occupies the land. [Photo via]