How New York's Old Money Built an Island Estate and Then Dynamited It: East Island

In 1913, J.P. Morgan Jr. finished a private island estate off Long Island's Gold Coast: more than forty rooms, a guarded bridge, a working farm and a mile of daffodils. In 1915, a gunman walked through its front door carrying sticks of dynamite, and the house survived. In 1980, it took dynamite to bring it down. This is the story of East Island and Matinecock Point, the Gilded Age mansion of Jack Morgan in Glen Cove, New York. It covers the 1915 assassination attempt tied to the Capitol bombing, the fortress the Morgans built afterward, and what happened when the last Morgan was gone. A developer bought it and leased it to Soviet diplomats. The Soviets bid on it at a 1950 auction. Then came a convent, and finally a promise to the island's eighty families that decided who could ever own the house. Just across the water, his son's mansion Salutation still stands on West Island, and was listed for $125 million. Why did one Morgan island keep its mansion while the other was demolished? The answer says a lot about how old money builds, protects and eventually loses its greatest houses. If you love lost mansions, Long Island Gold Coast history and old money real estate, this documentary is for you. Sources Wikipedia: Matinecock Point; East Island (Long Island Sound); J. P. Morgan Jr.; Erich Muenter; Glen Cove, New York; Salutation (estate); Jane Norton Grew; Killenworth; Poplar Hill (Glen Cove, New York); The Shell House; Sisters of St. John the Baptist; Permanent Mission of Russia to the United Nations American Aristocracy: Matinecock Point East Island Association: A Brief History of East Island Smithsonian Magazine: The Harvard Professor Who Bombed Congress and Shot a Financial Titan WETA Boundary Stones: Terrorism Hits Home in 1915 Glen Cove Heritage: The Day Morgan Was Shot The Harvard Crimson: Muenter, Once German Teacher Here The Morgan Library & Museum: Letters and telegrams of sympathy, 1915 Old Long Island: Matinecock Point; Matinecock Point Aerial; J.P. Morgan Jr.'s Corsair Mansions of the Gilded Age: Morgans' Island & Matinecock Point The Paper (Medium): Private Life of the Mighty Morgan New-York Historical Society: Jane Grew Morgan Military Wiki: J. P. Morgan Jr. WHAS11 / ABC News: A look at the Russian compounds Vanderbilt Cup Races: The Morgan Park Gazebo #OldMoney #GildedAge #LongIsland #JPMorgan #LostMansions #GoldCoast #NewYorkHistory #MansionHistory