Old Westbury Gardens is a Long Island estate listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the former home of John S. Phipps, his wife, Margarita Grace Phipps and their four children.
The estate is located at 71 Old Westbury Road in Old Westbury in Nassau County, New York. The property was converted into a museum home in 1959. It is open for tours from April through October.
John Phipps (1874-1958) was an heir to the family fortune created by Henry Phipps Jr. (1839-1930), a businessman and philanthropist. His father was an English shoemaker who immigrated in the early part of the 19th century to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before settling in Pittsburgh. Phipps grew up with Andrew Carnegie as a friend and neighbor. As an adult, he was Carnegie's business partner in the Carnegie Steel Company and became a very wealthy man. He was the company's second-largest shareholder and also invested in real estate. The Phipps family owned country estates on the Gold Coast, the stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America.
Work on the estate began in 1903, when John Shaffer Phipps promised his fiancée, Margarita Grace (a daughter of businessman Michael P. Grace), that he would build her a home in the United States that resembled her family's British residence at Battle Abbey in Battle, East Sussex, England. The house was ready in 1906 for Phipps, his wife and their young children.
Westbury House, the Carolean Revival (Charles II style) mansion designed by British designer George A. Crawley with assistance from American architect Grosvenor Atterbury, contains 23 rooms. The grounds cover 160 acres and include formal gardens, landscaped grounds, woodlands, ponds and lakes.
The gardens remain largely untouched from the Phipps era, with many English-style perennials and biennials preserved. Guests are often drawn to the rare plant species-including foxgloves, delphiniums, and more that are not usually found in public gardens. These plants have been well-maintained for decades by the dedicated horticulture staff, which grow many of the herbaceous plant material right on-site in the private greenhouse, preserving the original vision of John S. Phipps’ and George Crawley.
Westbury House is furnished with fine English antiques and decorative arts from the more than fifty years of the family's residence. The painting of Mrs. Henry Phipps and Her Grandson Winston (1906-07) by John Singer Sargent hangs in the dining room. Winston Guest was the child, and his godfather was Winston Churchill.
Scenes of the driveway and some of the ground floor interiors were used in the 1970 film Love Story, and its 1978 sequel, Oliver's Story, to depict the family home of Oliver Barrett IV, played by Ryan O'Neal. Other movies filmed on the grounds include North by Northwest (1959), The Age of Innocence (1993), and Arthur (2011). Scenes from the television series Gossip Girl and Royal Pains also used the location in filming. It served as the inspiration for the Buchanan Estate featured in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film adaption of The Great Gatsby.
@OldWestburyGardens welcomes visitors of all ages for guided tours of Westbury House, in-depth tours of the formal gardens, school visits, children's programs and events, family programs, museum exhibitions, health & wellness classes, classic car shows, indoor and outdoor classical and pop concerts, lectures, book signings, horticultural demonstrations and workshops, Scottish Games, botanical arts and gardening classes, and Master Gardener and Educator-led talks and tours of topics relating to horticulture, art, history, design and architecture.
Old Westbury Gardens seeks to inspire appreciation of the early 20th century American country estate through faithful preservation and interpretation of its landscape, gardens, architecture, and collections.
Learn more and plan your visit! www.oldwestburygardens.org/
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