American Pie: Sailing To The Land Of The Robber Barons
…The current crop is more discrete, and hardly anyone outside their coterie of friends would know who they are, except perhaps the paparazzi. They make their fortune by less visible means than their predecessors – hedge funds, real estate investment, web dot coms, etc. The houses these tycoons are building today are slightly less grand – a mere 15 bedrooms as opposed to the 20 to 25 of their predecessors, and a fraction of the acreage, but none the less impressive. Twelve car garages and indoor skating rinks are standard fare. Many have boat houses the size of an average family home. The smell of big money still hangs in the air…
John Merchant, writing about Long Island, the home and playground of New York’s super-rich and famous, will inevitably encourage numerous “if only’’ dreams.
To read more of John’s superlative columns please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/american_pie/
I have just returned from a week-long sailing trip to the north shore of Long Island. It’s a spectacular stretch of shoreline, almost a hundred and twenty miles from end to end, and features some of the most beautiful, protected bays a boater could hope for. It was first discovered and mapped by the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in the early seventeenth century, and then rediscovered in the twentieth century by the robber barons.
In the early nineteen hundreds, the wooded villages of the North Shore around Oyster and Huntington Bays provided a bucolic setting for the mansions of more than 500 estates. This was the playground of the likes of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and oil baron John D. Rockefeller. Their neighbors included the tycoons J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Charles Pratt, and F. W. Woolworth. Teddy Roosevelt played host at his Sagamore Estate in Oyster Bay, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1923 best-seller “The Great Gatsby” was written in a house he rented in nearby Great Neck.
Fitzgerald’s novel successfully captures the essence of those times, and the exclusivity of the area, which in his day could only be reached by car or boat. The Long Island Railroad was fragmented and unreliable, and there was but one gas station. Nowadays, residents and visitors have the choice of riding a train, a plane, a ferry or a major highway.
Most of the original resident tycoons had offices in New York City, and would commute back and forth in beautiful mahogany power boats that became known as, what else, “Commuters.” The “Commuters,” some of which have been lovingly restored to their original glory, are still to be seen in boat parades on holiday weekends such as July 4, their crews and passengers dressed in period costume. Polished brass fittings, rich upholstery and glowing, varnished mahogany still make for a head-turning sight.
The boats have an open cockpit where the operator sits behind a glass windshield, astern of which is an enclosed, richly appointed saloon that had facilities for the owner to shower, shave, dress and breakfast while on his way to his office in Manhattan. Powerful engines and a planing hull design allowed the craft to move along at a smart clip.
Despite today’s improved access, the shoreline hasn’t become overdeveloped, possibly due to the high price of land. Many of the old estates still exist, but are no longer privately owned. Some of them have been sub-divided; for robber barons never die, they simply reinvent themselves.
The current crop is more discrete, and hardly anyone outside their coterie of friends would know who they are, except perhaps the paparazzi. They make their fortune by less visible means than their predecessors – hedge funds, real estate investment, web dot coms, etc. The houses these tycoons are building today are slightly less grand – a mere 15 bedrooms as opposed to the 20 to 25 of their predecessors, and a fraction of the acreage, but none the less impressive. Twelve car garages and indoor skating rinks are standard fare. Many have boat houses the size of an average family home. The smell of big money still hangs in the air.
In the past 30 years, a second playground of the rich and famous has grown up further east on Long Island. The Hamptons, on the southern claw at the tip of the Island, started out as a place where the yuppies of Manhattan would get together to rent large, beachfront houses for the summer, paying a few thousand dollars for their share. Whilst renting still goes on today, the population has shifted towards one of permanent ownership, and the “Commuters” have been replaced by helicopters, seaplanes and chauffeured limousines.
This also is big money country, and the new, $30 million plus houses that have been built are commensurately grand, but not the mock Tudor or granite German Gothic styles of yesteryear. Stucco and pan tile Mediterranean, or more avant-garde architecture is the style of choice as the setting for weekend “events,” (“party” is so yesterday darling) put on by their owners, that are often written up in Monday’s New York Times.
The Hamptons crowd is not low-key, like their Oyster Bay counterparts. These are the glitterati who crave attention and deliberately set out to get it. This is rapper/ men’s fashion promoter Puff Daddy territory, or P. Diddy, or Shaun John if you prefer. Jerry Seinfeld, Martha Stewart, Steven Spielberg and Ralph Lauren frequently can be spotted in the local supermarket – just kidding, but they do have houses there. Singer songwriter Billy Joel also owns a residence, and has a small boatyard building luxury, forty foot, so called “picnic” boats in Coecles Harbor on nearby Shelter Island.
I have mixed feelings about all this excess, but at the same time don’t have much idea how I would choose to live if I had their fortunes. Perhaps I’d be just like them. It would be interesting to find out.
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