
'
Shoremond', the
Ormond Gerald Smith estate designed by
Hoppin & Koen c. 1910 on
Centre Island. The 12 bedroom estate consisted of almost a mile of waterfront on the
Long Island Sound. Smith was the president of
Street and Smith Publications Inc. which produced such magazines as
Popular, Top Notch, Ainslee's and
Picture Play. His obituary says his firm printed more than 3,600 titles since their inception. The estate had two subsequent owners before it was demolished in the 1940s. Click
HERE to see where '
Shoremond' stood on google earth.






Pictures from
Architectural Record, 1916. Click below to see the remnants of '
Shoremond' in a 1966 aerial shot.
4 comments:
i know this is a dumb question but if they didn't really break the estate up for development, why did they demolish a 30 year old house? granted the two houses that replaced it aren't exactly tar paper shacks but if they were going to build a house almost as big, why not keep the original that the paint was hardly dry in/
the large house on the site wasn't built immediately after construction, but rather only a four or five years ago.
but still why demolish the house if they weren't gona build anything there anyway
Taxes on an estate were focused mainly on the value of the structure. Huge houses paid huge taxes. After tge depression mansions on this scale were considered out of style. The trend moved toward more suburban looking large homes making large mansions unsaleable white elephants with a major tax burden. Add to that the cost of coal for heat and the staff needed to maintain the placr. Unable to pay the operating costs and with no buyers the owners tore down the houses and subdivided the property.
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