The Phipps Family and Their Fabulous Long Island Estates
Amongst all the bold-faced names associated with Long Islands Gold Coast during its gilded age heyday, “Phipps” stands out. While others may have built larger and more lavish estates, as an aggregate few families could approach the half-dozen or more they owned. Social, sporty and philanthropic, the Phippses embodied the north shore lifestyle, an integral part of its fabric, whether on the polo field, breeding champion racehorses, or creating world-class gardens.
Thanks to prudent investments and sound financial planning, they also retained their wealth. Withstanding income tax, the Great Depression, the servant problem, and two world wars, they were able to hold onto and maintain their properties, often through multiple generations, and in some cases for nearly a century or more. They began buying up property there around the same time they relocated from Pittsburgh to New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. While each estate merits a book on its own, for the sake of including them all this post can only give a cursory overview of each.
Westbury House
The Phipps’s eldest son, John Shaffer (“Jay”) Phipps led the charge, buying a farm in Old Westbury in 1901. After his marriage to Margarita Grace in 1903 he reputedly promised to build her a country home that would rival the finest mansions found in England, hiring British artist and designer George A Crawley to design a house, as well as a number of gardens on the property.
Entrance Hall, photo: Loc.gov
As Crawley was not a formally trained architect Grosvenor Atterbury also worked on the project, executing the technical drawings and specifications. The resulting Charles II-style mansion named Westbury House was completed in 1906, with later additions coming along in 1911 and 1924. The gardens were enlarged over time as well, and the property’s total acreage grew to over 300 acres.
Jay and Margarita’s daughter inherited the property following their deaths in the late 1950s. She (along with her siblings) set up a nonprofit foundation to preserve the gardens and house, and open them up to the public. Today, Old Westbury Gardens operates as a public trust allowing people a glimpse into the lost world of the North Shore’s gilded age.
Spring Hill
Upper Left: Gladys Mills Phipps and Ogden Mills Phipps, Top Center: Great Hall
The Phipps second eldest son Henry Carnegie (“Hal”) Phipps came next, purchasing an estate near his brother’s from William L Stow in 1906, naming it Spring Hill. The mansion on the property was designed by a young John Russell Pope and completed in 1903. While often referred to as a Mediterranean villa, the building’s exterior appearance was also strongly infulenced by the French Beaux-arts traditions. After he wed heiress Gladys Mills in 1907 at her parents’ palatial mansion in Staatsburg, NY, the couple made slight alterations to the mansion while expanding the grounds to over 200 acres over time, adding exquisite formal gardens, a tennis house, and stables as well.
In 1929 their son Ogden Mills Phipps commissioned Delano and Aldrich design a Georgian-style home on the northern part of the property.
Ogden Mills Phipps home on the estate
After Hal’s death in 1953, Gladys continued to occupy Spring Hill during summers until her own passing in 1970 when Ogden Phipps inherited the property. Having his own mansion next door, he had the empty mansion, which was costing him over $70,000 in taxes annually, razed, converting the croquet lawn into a helicopter pad.
The site of Hal and Gladys’ former mansion
After Ogden Phipps’ death in 2000 the Spring Hill estate was sold to developers. His daughter Cynthia Phipps retained the Delano and Aldrich house and a surrounding 20 acres, however, while her brother Ogden Mills “Dinnie” Phipps jr owned a house surrounded by nearly 20 acres on Bagatelle road along the southern border of their parents’ property, designed by architect Thomas Hastings in 1932.
Ogden Mills Phipps jar’s house on Bagatelle Road
After Cynthia’s death in 2007 and her brother’s in 2016, these two homes went out of the family as well, ending the Henry C Phipps connection to Spring Hill after 100 years. On a happy note, the current owners of Ogden and his daughter Cynthia’s house did a thorough and sensitive restoration, featured in AD Magazine.
Knole
Top Left: Helen Phipps Martin, Top Right: Osmond Bradley Martin and his wife.
The Phipps elder daughter Helen ( married to Bradley Martin Jr.) joined her brothers in 1910, purchasing Knole. Designed by Thomas Hastings of Carrere and Hastings for Thomas Duryea and completed in 1903. Its location size and scale were ideal for Helen and Bradley, and being relatively new, required no updating. They only made minor alterations, including a nursery wing for their two sons, and lovingly maintained the house and gardens over the years.
The rotunda of the mansion
The mansion’s garden facade
Their son Osmond Bradley Martin inherited the place after their deaths and was an excellent steward of their home and collections. After Osmonds’s death in 2001, the press lamented the loss of one of the North Shore’s last “great gentlemen”. Knole’s magnificent furnishings were auctioned at Christies, and the estate was sold to a developer who subdivided its remaining 34 acres. The house, then sitting on a mere 9 acres, was put on the market in 2005. Built for another era, it proved to be a hard sell and appeared to be doomed to the wrecking ball before family stepped in at the last minute and bought it, intending to restore it, keeping it as a private home.
Bonnie Blink
With three of their five children having great estates there already, the senior Phipps, purchased an 89-acre tract in Lake Success across the street from Willie K Jr.s, Deepdale in 1916. The property was in Annie’s name (a not uncommon practice at the time) and the couple commissioned Horace Trumbauer to design a 39- room manor house for them. Named Bonnie Blink, Georgian revival brick house with its columned portico was impressive, but at the same time more understated than Westbury House, Knole or Spring Hill. After Henry and Annie’s deaths (in 1930 and 1934 respectively)all of their children had large Long island estates of their own, and none of them wanted or need the burden and upkeep of the grand place. After being used to house evacuated British children during World War Two, the family donated the mansion and nine acres to the Great Neck School district in 1949, with the district purchasing the rest of the acreage (by then nearly 115 acres).
The following year, the former Phipps mansion was converted into the Phipps Administration Building, which it continues to be used for today.
Templeton (Roslyn Manor)
Top Left: Amy Phipps Guest, Top Center: The marble staircase from the Phipps former Fifth Avenue Townhouse reinstalled at Templeton
The Phipps younger daughter Amy had moved to London following her marriage to the Hon. Frederick Guest. Coming back to the States after World War I, and it wasn’t long before they were looking for a Long Island abode near her parents and siblings. In 1921, her brother Hal successfully bid $470,000 on their behalf for White Eagle, the Alred I du Pont estate in Wheatley Heights at a private auction. Built between 1916 and 1916 to the designs of Thomas Hastings, the house and grounds had reportedly cost DuPont $1.1 million.
Its garden façade was considered one of the most beautiful on Long Island. They renamed the estate Roslyn Manor and made relatively few changes until 1927, when Henry and Anne decided to sell their Fifth Avenue townhouse, which was soon razed to make way for an apartment building. The mansion’s white Carrera marble entry hall and grand staircase were installed Templeton (at the same time, its exquisitely carved dining room paneling made its way to Westbury House. After Frederick’s death in 1937, Amy continued to summer there for another twenty years until her own passing in 1959. Her son Winston and his wife C. Z., high-profile members of the International Set, inherited it after her death.
They renamed the place Templeton, and it became known for their entertaining the elite of high society and the international jet set there. That role proved short-lived, as Winston, whose money was tied in in family trusts, needed to liquidate holding following some bad airline investments less than a decade later, selling it to the New York Institute of Technology. The institution currently maintains it as a conference center and events space.
The Guests’ “new” Templeton
The Guests did not abandon Long Island altogether after selling, purchasing a smaller English-style home on 15 acres nearby, which they also named Templeton. With 28 rooms, “new” Templeton would only have seemed quaint and affordabile in comparison to the first one’s grandeur. Their daughter Cornelia inherited the estate after C. Z.’s death, and later sold it for $5.8 million in 2012. It was later demolished.
Erchless
The Phipps youngest son Howard, who owned a 127-acre farm next door to Westbury House after his graduation from Yale in 1907, was quite content to use the simple farmhouse already on the property. That is until he became engaged to Harriet Dyer Price in 1931. In anticipation of a new wife and eventual children, he hired an architect to design a new home on the property that would be more on par with those owned by the rest of the family. Construction began in 1931 but came to halt after his wedding. Helen took a strong interest in the project and asked architect Lewis Greenleaf Adams to design something a little less baronial for them.
photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate
The resulting u-shaped Georgian colonial, completed in 1935 was both elegant and grand, but also livable and adapted to 20th-century lifestyles.
photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate
Despite the nearly twenty-year difference in their ages, Howard and Harriet died within months of each other (he at the age of 99, she at the age of 80). Erchless was inherited by their son Howard Phipps Jr. and his wife Mary, who maintained the house and award-winning gardens to gilded age standards until putting it on the market in 2018.
