The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Glamorous Coastline: Long Island’s Gold Coast

In 1899, on the highest ground in Long Island's Nassau County, Stanford White drew Harbor Hill for Clarence Mackay, reportedly White's largest house. The main house cost $781,000, about $30 million today, and the Salem A.M.E. Church's burial ground was moved off the hill. Hundreds of great estates, by some counts more than a thousand, rose along the North Shore for Pratts, Phippses, Goulds and Vanderbilts, and by the 1920s it was called the Gold Coast. In 1915, a gunman shot J.P. Morgan Jr., and his butler fought back with a lump of coal. By one count, about six hundred North Shore estates were worth more than $500 million in the 1920s, roughly $9 billion today. F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby in Great Neck, and in 1924 Mackay entertained the Prince of Wales with almost a thousand guests. Then the 1929 crash wiped out Mackay, the top federal income tax rate climbed from 24 percent that year to 94 percent by 1944, and 1924 immigration limits slowed the flow of European servants. In 1947, his son tore down Harbor Hill to cut property taxes and make way for development. The Gold Coast's villages are still among New York State's richest, but fewer than a third of those great houses survive. This is the story of why the money stayed and the way of life did not. Sources Hofstra University Special Collections - Harbor Hill, Mackay/Hechler Collection, 1900–2000, finding aid (hofstra.edu, 2010) Roslyn Landmark Society - Harbor Hill estate profile and research on the Harbor Hill A.M.E. cemetery (roslynlandmarks.org) Raymond E. and Judith A. Spinzia - "Gatsby: Myths and Realities of Long Island's North Shore Gold Coast" (Nassau County Historical Society Journal, 1997) WNET/Thirteen - "A Guide to Long Island's Gold Coast Mansions" (thirteen.org) Daily Voice - "Long Island Accounts For 8 Of NY's Top 10 Richest Locales" (dailyvoice.com, December 2024) IRS Statistics of Income - Historical Table 23 (top income tax rates) and "The Estate Tax: Ninety Years and Counting" (irs.gov)