The dining room at 'Oak Knoll', the Bertram G. Work estate designed by Delano & Aldrich c. 1916 in Mill Neck. Click HERE for more on 'Oak Knoll'.
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The dining room at 'Oak Knoll', the Bertram G. Work estate designed by Delano & Aldrich c. 1916 in Mill Neck. Click HERE for more on 'Oak Knoll'.
5 comments:
Almost a lesson in proportion and scale and elegant detail. Amazing house
It is one of my favorite houses! it is truly Delano & Aldrich at their best. They designed so many large houses that portrayed simple elegance, but Oak Knoll is elegance perfected. I was there many years ago, and the whole approach from the enticing entrance gates that lead up a steep driveway, that drop you off into the center courtyard where the facade appears. There is also an enclosed garden with I think two pavilions and an arbor along the rear. At one time a long allee stretched down to the water, which can be seen on old aerials. It is a timeless house, just a suited for today as when it was built. I would have to put it in my top 10 favs of Long Island houses and Delano & Aldrich's best.
This home was used in the 1970's horrow film the sentinel.
One of the world's best houses, to my mind. many years ago, a wonderful man worked for my family. His father had been Bertram Work's original superintendant at Oak Knole. He told me that even in the headiest days of the 1920's, Mr. Work believed that hard times were "just around the corner" and his instructions to Delano and Aldrich were for a small, manageable estate. Now small and manageable are clearly relative terms, but the result was sheer perfection.
Magnus's wonderful anecdote reminds me also of William Delano's remembrance that Bertam Work wanted, not only to have a manageable place, but that he wanted to pay for it out of income so he would have no mortgage. Delano drily said 'it must have been a considerable income, as the final cost was around a million dollars' back in the day that a million really meant something.
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