'Fairleigh', the George Brewster estate designed by Trowbridge & Livingston c. 1914 in Muttontown. Brewster was president of the Provident Loan Society, director of the Industrial Alcohol Corp. and the Piping Rock Realty Company. The estate has an Alfred Hopkins designed farm group and landscaping by James Greenleaf and now operates as the Hoffman Preserve. Click HERE and HERE for more on 'Fairleigh'. Click HERE to see 'Fairleigh' on google and HERE on bing. Photos courtesy of Eddie Crowley.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
All pudding, no sauce.
The sauce would be the fantastic farm grouping -
http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.8333634&lon=-73.5496689&z=18&l=0&m=b&show=/2363469/Fairleigh-Farm-Group
Speaking of the great Virginia plantation houses and their effect on Long Island architecture.
I've always been indifferent to this house---nice, not great, something a bit 'off' about the proportions. Not everybody was Delano & Aldrich or William Lawrence Bottomley.
Nice photos of a very attractive house. Whatever your opinion is on the Hoffman Preserve and their operations and the limited access to the property, they have done a remarkable restoration of the house after the previous owners stripped and nearly tore the place apart prior to almost certain demolition. Definitely could use a more mature landscaped setting to offset the scale of the home. Maybe that will come in time, but the former gardens shown on a previous post really balanced the big homes presence on the flat landscape.
On Bing, I like the way the former tennis courts are slowing reverting back to nature and except for the large dining room addition, the impact of the former country club is also fading away. Nice to see that useless acreage, drowned in pesticides and fertilizers, where one hits a little white ball around can restore itself over time.
Maybe the Hoffamn trustees can provide a series of seminars to the bozos in Nassau County government on how to manage a property.
So what does the interior look like today? Their website provides no glimpses of the manor house within and only suggests that other estate buildings are becoming education centers.
While the present foundation/NFP owners seemingly have little desire to make this a Coe Hall with accessibility at least it isn't being razed and subdivided.
This is a good example of how important of a role the gardens can play in the presentation of a house. The slightly 'off' proportions of the architecture were balanced by the lush landscape of the house's heyday.
TDC --
I think that's right.
BTW, isn't the paint scheme for the front door all wrong? Or at least a big missed opportunity?
Sad to say that the interior is sterile, understandable given the barbaric destruction by the former owners.
This is an absolutely beautiful estate.
Post a Comment