HISTORIC HOMES:The house on Long Island that inspired Daisy Buchanan's residence in 'The Great Gatsby' is to be knocked down
LITERATURE has produced many wonderfully evocative descriptions of fictional houses – from Dickens’s Bleak House: “one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down steps out of one room into another” to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: “Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones."
Some are quite alluring; none more so than the estate in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again”; while others send a shiver down the spine: Bram Stoker’s chilling description of Dracula’s castle: “Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit. The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!”
But few writers can match the compelling glamour of American novelist, F Scott Fitzgerald. In his famous 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway has rented a modest bungalow on Long Island Sound near New York from where he can see the fabulous seaside mansions of the rich – "huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season".
One, belonging to the mysterious Gatsby, was: “a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden".
But Gatsby has no interest in his opulent home and, as Nick discovers, has only bought it to be close to the mansion occupied by Daisy, his lost love, who lives with her husband, Tom Buchanan. Nick’s description of their house is written in the kind of purple prose envied by generations of realtors (as the Yanks call estate agents):
“Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens – finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon . . .”
Fitzgerald, who lived on Long Island, based Daisy's house on Land's End, a 25-room mansion. The house, set amidst 13 cliff-top acres of mature woodland and manicured lawns, was built in 1902 for a wealthy tycoon and was famed for its magical sea views and sumptuous interiors featuring hand-painted wallpaper and marbled floors. The novelist attended cocktail parties there as did the crème de la crèmeof Manhattan society. Long Island was – and remains – a favourite destination for wealthy city-dwellers seeking to escape the cruel heat and humidity of the Big Apple summer.
Now the American papers report that “Daisy’s house” – at which Gatsby longingly gazed – is to be demolished. Land’s End is sadly derelict. The current owner, property developer David Brodsky, inherited the house from his father, who reputedly bought it for $17.5 million in 2004. He had hoped to restore the house to its former glory but the cost has proved too great. In 2006, he tried to sell the dilapidated mansion for $30 million but failed to find a buyer.
And all the while, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance are costing him an estimated $4,500 a day. Many’s the Irish property developer will doubtless feel his pain.
The planning authorities in Long Island have now approved plans to demolish the Land’s End mansion and divide its 13 acres into five sites for new, custom-built houses.
Starting prices are expected to begin at $10 million. As Fitzgerald himself supposedly noted: "The rich are different than you and me." To which Hemingway reputedly replied: “Yes, they have more money."
