Sunday, April 12, 2009

The Braes - First Edition

In 1902, Herbert Lee Pratt commissioned Brite & Bacon to design him this shingled Georgian Revival in Glen Cove on the Pratt's Dosoris holdings.  At some point in the following decade Herbert Pratt seems to have tired of his 'country cottage' because he had James Brite build an entirely new house for him in 1912, one on a far grander scale, which can be seen HERE.  



1 comment:

Magnuspetrie said...

When Herbert Pratt's father, Charles died, the children of his second marriage (to his late first wife's sister!) were quite young, and his will was relatively restrictive: His children received income from trusts established for each of them, but the principal reverted to THEIR children at their death. The first spate of houses that Charles' children built were, like the first Braes, large by today's standards, but relatively modest by the "Robber Baron" standards then prevailing. In 1912, the US Supreme Court ordered the dismeberment of Standard Oil into dozens of smaller companies. Contemporary newspapers mention a number of lawsuits among Charles Pratt's children and the trustees about which securities received in the break-up were to be considered "Principal" and therefore part of the Pratt Trusts and which were "income" and free to do with as they pleased. It does not take too huge a leap to assume that enough was allocated to "Income" to permit all but one of the children to tear down or substantially remodel their existing houses and replace them with far grander structures. And to think, not more than 15 years later, these monuments to wealth would be widely regarded as "white elephants", burdens even to families as rich as the Pratts.