'Poplar Hill', built for Frederic B. Pratt by Charles Platt between 1917 and 1924 in Glen Cove. This home sits atop Poplar Hill and is very close to brother George's house 'Killenworth'. Click HERE to see Poplar Hill on google earth.
This would have been the front lawn, the trees would have been much smaller and the view of the Long Island Sound in the distance would be much more visible.
4 comments:
How is the house in use today?
Today it operates as the Glengariff Nursing Home.
As a child living on Morgan's Island in the late 70's, my "gang" and I would venture into the surrounding country side exploring the old mansions. We stumbled across the abandoned Poplar Hill and made it our clubhouse. Climbing through a broken window in the forecourt, the house was our 3 and 1/2 story clubhouse. It must have been used as a school, because there was a curly cue slide added at the back as a fire escape. I only wish I truly knew the history and the priviledge we had being in that home. But I have fond memories over two summers when it was ours.
If your were standing in the middle of the road in the first(top) picture here, less than fifty yards to your left is the Killenworth property line. Today there are small parking lots at that spot. Unitl about the mid 1970's there was a small mound covered in pine trees. In amongst the trees was the water tower built for Fredrick Pratt by Lamb &Rich in 1891. The water tower was constructed of iron struts and lattice work (I am not an architect and am probably not using the correct terminology) that supported a large cast iron tank about 80 feet or more up in the air.Also attached to the perimeter of the support structure was a wooden silo about perhaps 15 or more feet in diameter. In this "silo" were wooden stairs which rose up to the top of the sturcture from which you could look down on the top of the tank. As kids in the fifties we would go up these stairs to the platform at the top where we would proceed to "rock" the "silo" back and forth using only the weight of our bodies moving back and forth. We could make this "silo' stucture move perhaps six of more feet off center. Since it was already at that time about 75 years old and probably never had much if any maintenance perfomed on it, we were probably lucky it did not detach from the metal structure and topple. You had to be there. I wonder if any pictures of this structure exist? you would think that the Glengariff nursing home people would have contracted the removal of the tower (in the early 70's??) and they or the contractor would have pictures. Jeff
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