Monday, October 11, 2010

'Ivycroft'

'Ivycroft', the Eliot Cross estate originally built for Perry Tiffany by Gage & Wallace c. 1891 and enlarged by Cross (of Cross & Cross) in 1925 in Old Westbury. Click HERE to see the brochure from when 'Ivycroft' was for sale. Click HERE to see 'Ivycroft' on google earth and HERE on bing.


Click below to see 'Ivycroft' as it looked in a 1966 aerial shot.

11 comments:

Turner Pack Rats said...

yes, i'm back after my yearly sojourn to the Common Ground Country Fair (see MOFGA.org FMI)at which i worked 120 hours the week of the fair. have been recuperating but couldn't resist commenting on this disaster. i think the comment - "what the hell were you thinking?" applies here. what an abortion. as much as i would never recommend ripping one of these masterpieces down, where's my crowbar. this place is a quintessential mansion with that huge portico covered in ivy. horsewhipping would be too good for the current owner, don't you think LGB. i'm thinking boiled in oil (organic cold expeller pressed extra extra virgin) and sentenced to the nearest trailer park for life. how can somebody do this. i'm calling the RealEstalker and getting some of her nerve pills and repairing to my bier or drinking a few biers.
and,i know that some of these looneys sell off the acreage supposedly to make money altho they have more than a 100 people could spend in 10 lifetimes, it ruins the estate synergy more than their abortive architectural skills (altho in this case i'd say it was a tossup)

security word def - "desesse" - a perfect word to describe this estate. most estates you would assess the value but in this case......

Anonymous said...

I really don't understand why people buy these old mansions only to destroy the integrity of the place. If you have the money...then go build your own eye-sore without ruining a masterpiece. It seems obvious that these people dont really care or have any respect for old architecture, so why then do they go and buy old homes???

As for the rich...it seems the more they have the more they want. None of them, at least these days, seem to care for family homes and gardens. It breaks my heart everytime I pass by Knoll on Post Road...to see that beautiful brick wall broken for a new road.....

Zach...were you able to hunt down that 1929 Fieldstone manor on 32 acres in Brookville? I hope a developer didn't get their hands on that one.

Anonymous said...

Sorry...I meant Knole in Old Westbury.

Gary Lawrance said...

I wonder who took the west wing down and when?

lil' gay boy said...

Horsewhipping indeed; although it's a waste of a good whip here...

It always amazed me how Cross & Cross were able to take an astonishingly ugly home and make it worse. And to think it was the architect's own home, too.

Nothing but bells, whistles and frippery ––– as the old saying goes, "You can put lipstick on a pig ––– but it's still a pig."

With the exception of that godawful porch facing the pool, much of the demolition has actually improved the property to my eye...

Security word - baaulate: when the baby lamb tells the mama lamb she realizes mama's expecting.

Gary Lawrance said...

Looks like it happened before 1966. It's not there, so must have been torn down before that. Its always a mystery to find out when some major change happened. An of all the wings! That was the library and master suite wing.

Anonymous said...

lil' gay boy...why do you think this house is astonishingly ugly? Compared to the homes built today...I think this would have been worthy of saving. Maybe it's not as grand as Westbury House, or Eagle Nest....or Pembroke....but still, it beats any home built in the last 50 years or so.

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

And the Playroom GL. They destroyed the Playroom! Lovely house, perfect floor plan, beautiful decorated, great location. Still with its original stable and gatehouse .
Destruction by decay.

Zach L. said...

Anonymous...it is called 'The Hameau', pictures soon.

Turner Pack Rats said...

sorry, LGB, but you're off the rails this time. frippery and grandiosity are what these estates were all about. that was the point - i've got money and i'm going to show you in the showiest way possible that you don't. the more gargantuan and out of proportion to real life, the better. some of them got it right and actually made masterpieces and some of them just stuck it in our face but thats what they were trying to do. although this one certainly lacks any creative landscaping and the interiors are beyond boring, that pic of the chair next to the column in the sales brochure gets my vote and the aerial just shows how together this place was. just add the landscaping of pembroke or meudon and you've got a winner.

security word def (LGB and DED get all the good ones. - "pusoutwi" - massively wrong spelling of pusillanimous - def - lacking courage and resolution - by the 8 year old in the national spelling bee who went on to win American Idol

lil' gay boy said...

TPR, I cannot dispute the intent of what these estates meant ––– my only observation is that, especially for the home of an architect, it not appear blatantly so.

Given that it was a textbook Beaux Arts floor plan, it seems to me that it could have been executed better, rather than resembling a hastily constructed backlot set. Those overbearing lintels over double-hung windows are artless & unforgivable.

;-)

Security word - intic: a hip arachnid (yeah we do get good ones sometimes).