Friday, October 1, 2010

'Wolver Hollow'

'Wolver Hollow', the Charles Oliver Iselin estate designed by Hoppin & Koen c. 1914 in Upper Brookville. The house had Olmsted Brothers landscaping with various additions by Beatrix Farrand and Ellen Shipman. The house itself also had alterations by Warren & Wetmore and later Harrie Lindeberg. Iselin was a member of the investment banking firm of Iselin and Company. 'Wolver Hollow' is currently for sale along with 8 acres for $4,995,000, click HERE to see the listing on Daniel Gale Sotheby's. Click HERE for more on 'Wolver Hollow'.


Listing photos from Daniel Gale Sotheby's.

11 comments:

The Down East Dilettante said...

Boy, all the big guns had a shot at this place, and yet seemed to keep the design integrated...

But oh, my god, that cheap modern garden balustrade....where do people find this stuff?

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

I can't quite tell - is that rope light in the dinning room?

Palm trees at Winfield Hall .


This would do a little more damage then falling gold dust from the Music Room ceiling!

Anonymous said...

That's a shame about Winfield...to let such a beauty to fall slowly into ruins.

Love the entrance to Wolver Hollow. I'm surprised as to how many gold-coast estates are for sale. It's a shame that the people who seem to buy these homes have no sense of history or style.Too bad preservationists don't make more money.

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

To be fair the "porch" ceiling photo is a few years old. Its possible Carey has had it repaired??? The the floors have been redone. The palms trees were put in for the remake of Mildred Pierce.

Anonymous said...

Do you know what that building with the clock is? Is that original to the estate when Woolworth lived there? It always bothers me that the arm is missing off the statue of Neptune. In Monica Randalls pictures the arm is still there...so it must be loss within the last twenty or so years.

Zach L. said...

It was the carriage house. And I believe when Reynolds owned the estate there was a lab in there.

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

18-car garage and servants quarters. When RJ Reynolds purchased property he turned building into a research lab where supposedly he invented Reynolds Wrap. The Pall Corporation had a 99-year lease for their headquarters at Winfield Hall but moved out early a few years back. I've yet to hear what if any settlement was reached for the breach of that lease???

lil' gay boy said...

It seems a shame that the stable complex is no longer part of the estate, although it appears to be sensitively subdivided.

The old saw "Too many cooks spoil the broth..." does not apply here; despite the wildly varying hands, the house displays a cohesive accretion of styles over time that knit the fabric of the structure into a harmonious composition.

Would that I had the bucks...

As for Winfield Hall, I have always loved that entrance hall ––– the two million dollar marble staircase (and the fact that the house, at the time, reportedly cost almost the same amount as the Woolworth Building in Manhattan), has been a constant source of fascination for me. Site of several movies, its own story would indeed make for a fine gothic miniseries; suspected arson, suicide, secret passages & hidden compartments, with a touch of Egyptology and Napoleonic leanings thrown in just for fun.

Anonymous said...

You forgot suicide, ghosts, ufo landings and a supposed porno film......

Anonymous said...

Wolver Hollow sat empty and grown over for many years in the 70's. Rumor had it Pia Zadora's husband had owned it???.

Anonymous said...

Pia Zadora lived there with her then husband, Meshulam Riklis, an early corporate raider. They also owned Pickfair in Beverley Hills, which they demolished, so I guess we were lucky.

For those who missed it , interesting article in Times (typical uninformed reference that there are almost no estates left on the North Shore) that mentions Land's End. Appalling photo, when Brodsky bought it, the house was in decent condition. The idea that someone can overpay for an historic estate, neglect it and then get permission to demolish it because it is not salable at a significant profit is absurd. Shame on the DEC, State Historic Preservation Office and most of all, the village of Sands Point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/nyregion/01gatsby.html?scp=1&sq=sands%20point&st=cse


September 30, 2010
Eyeing the Unreal Estate of Gatsby Esq.
By MARY JO MURPHY
IF the measure of the great American novel is whether thousands of people will pay to watch a staged reading of its every word in a single seating, interrupted only by a meal and maybe a sipped Manhattan or six, then Jonathan Whatshisname’s latest doorstopper is not your book. “The Great Gatsby” is......
That is if you can find this place. Long Island was the setting for the novel, but discovering what’s left of its 1920s Gold Coast splendor — either the real thing or Fitzgerald’s vivid gilt invention — is as much a job for a receptive imagination as it is for a Google map with a homing device directed to locate a certain green beacon. It’s a diverting exercise, though, and the railroad is an excellent starting point. After all, it ferried party guests to Gatsby, whose “station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains.”.............

It’s not the grail of the Gold Coast, though. That would be some gaudy pile that served as the inspiration for the Gatsby mansion in arriviste West Egg (the Kings Point end of the Great Neck peninsula), or, better yet, the Buchanan house in old-gold East Egg (the Sands Point end of the Port Washington peninsula), where Gatsby directed his gaze across Manhasset Bay to fixate on the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. You won’t find either. Not definitively.........

A large, white-columned Sands Point estate called Lands End, now in disrepair as developers seek to tear it down and subdivide the lot, is the one most frequently invoked as the inspiration for the Buchanan residence. When it was put up for sale in 2002, the real estate notices boasted unequivocally that it was. That’s because it was the home of the newspaperman Herbert Bayard Swope and his wife, Margaret, and the Fitzgeralds were among the theater and literary set at the Swopes’ famous parties. At least they were until Margaret disinvited them after Zelda stripped at one party and tried to seduce Margaret’s shy adolescent brother, who was terrified, writes Judith S. Goldstein in her book “Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream.” Ms. Goldstein quotes a 1931 account: "That was it for Margaret. Zelda was out. ‘Not with my brother, sister! Not in my house, Mrs. F!’ ”

You can see how Fitzgerald might have drawn inspiration for the novel’s raucous parties.

But wait. The Swopes did not move to “East Egg” until the Fitzgeralds had bolted for France; they lived in “West Egg” then (actually Great Neck), and it was their house on East Shore Road there, near Fitzgerald’s good friend and partner in alcoholism, Ring Lardner, that was the scene of those early bacchanals. This first Swope house no longer exists, but the Lardner house, at 325 East Shore Road, does.
........