Wednesday, June 11, 2014

'Spring Hill'

The ruined garden wall at 'Spring Hill', the Henry Carnegie Phipps estate designed by John Russell Pope c. 1903 for William L. Stow in Old Westbury.  Click HERE for all previous posts on 'Spring Hill'.

9 comments:

Tyngsboro said...

Wonderful panoramic view of the terrace wall ~ so sad, though. One can almost imgine those clouds rolling by !

Kyle Peterson said...

Time for some round up on those steps!

Anonymous said...

John Kean should just stop pretending already that he is interested in saving this neglected garden remnant and just bulldoze it which will inevitably happen when a buyer builds on the lot. It will be easier to install ones own retaining wall than try and rebuild this long neglected crumbling piece of history which has deteriorated even further.
Archibuff

The Ancient said...

Archibuff --

Do you think the the same argument was once made, long ago, when the Temple to Jupiter that Hadrian built on Temple Mount was pulled down by Constantine?

j/k

Anonymous said...

Not familiar with the evolution of Temple Mount but if you refer to Constantine's demolition of the pagan temple built by Hadrian, who had in turn demolished a prior structure to build his own, in order for Constantine to come later and build a new Christian Temple, being the first Christian Emperor then I dont see the exact correlation. Few preserved past emperor's glories and more often than not took credit for prior construction as their own.

If Kean is the new emperor (owner) at Spring Hill he may build what he wants, demolish all the structures and rip out the crumbling retaining wall as he sees fit. To the victor go the spoils, however Kean has a history of saying one thing in the press, pretending to be a preservation minded developer and them bulldozing his historic properties to suit his needs, Burrwood being a prime example. I only say stop the charade already and own up to the fact that you dont give a crap about preservation and will do whatever the new homebuyer wants on this lot, number 15, which would be getting rid of that decaying wall.

He hasn't lifted a finger in stabilizing the wall yet Kean states on his website his intentions are to preserve the Gold Coast properties history and laughably that they are painstakingly retoring the fantastic retaining wall and steps to their original splendor. Unless my eyesight fails me I dont believe one penny has been put into the resoration of this wall under his ownership and it continues to crumble to dust, to a point beyond salvaging.

That is Kean's idea of preservation? I prefer the Roman emperor's agenda, to wipe away his predeccesors projects to build his own, at least you knew what you were getting with them, with Kean it's a total scam. Archibuff

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the wall.
Was there a basement underneath it? Could a basement be put underneath it?
It would be an absolutely beautiful feature to anyone's house, but I just cant imagine many buyers want to deal with something they really don't know or care much about.
I'd certainly keep it though.

Zach L. said...

The wall is structural and holding up a large portion of hillside behind it.

Yes there was a basement underneath Spring Hill and it is my belief that when the house was demolished much of it was pulled down and used to fill in the basement. Whoever ends up purchasing that lot will be saddled not only with repairing the wall (or I suppose installing a new wall) but also excavating a bunch of infill before they can pour a foundation for a new house.

At the rate the wall is deteriorating there won't be much left to salvage in another 5 or 10 years. It looked halfway decent in 2007 but the last 7 years have not been kind to it.

Zach L. said...

As it looked in 2008:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OlaVeajrP30/SHFyGOhyczI/AAAAAAAAA84/-eyarTCM3uU/s1600-h/IMG_1668.jpg

Artman said...

I just took a nice panoramic view of the wall last week as well