The roaring 20s, an age of opulence and grandeur, was captured so well by F Scott Fitzgerald’s The
Great Gatsby. But from where did he draw his inspiration? Hi everyone, ken here,
welcome to this house. Today we are exploring Harbor Hill, the house that inspired the Great
Gatsby. Make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an exciting episode of this house.
Clarence Mackay was born into unmeasurable wealth. His father, John William Mackay was
a first generation American from Ireland who grew up poor. He sold newspapers and labored
in a shipyard to support his wife and 3 kids. He saved up his money and opened a mining business in
Virginia City, Nevada where he would find the jackpot, or the Big Bonanza as it was called,
a silver and gold deposit worth the modern day equivalent of 2 and a half billion dollars.
John, being new money, would be snubbed from high society, but his children would be welcomed.
In 1897, Clarence met the love of his life, Katherine Alexander Duer,
also known as Kitty. She was born into old money and descended from Lady Kitty Duer of Grasmere.
When the young couple wed in 1898, John Mackay gifted his new daughter in law Harbour Hill,
placing her name on the deed. Harbour Hill was a palatial estate,
sitting on 648 acres over looking Hempstead Harbor in Long Island.
They would Hire architect Stanford White to complete their dream home
at the end of a 1 mile long driveway lined with maple trees. The house would
boast 80,000 square feet and offer sweeping views of New York City from 23 miles away.
The 52 room mansion would take 3 years to complete,
coming to a total cost of 781,000 dollars, or the modern day equivalent of about 27 million dollars.
Now completed, it had become one of the largest homes in the nation and to this day is still the
8th largest home to have been built in the US. The massive palace, sitting on over 1 square
mile of land, required a domestic staff of 126 servants to maintain it both inside and out.
The entrance hall greeted guests with walls of panelled oak separated by pilasters and
a geometric ceiling laid out in the Jacobean style. The grand staircase,
wide and long, was finished out with oak paneling to match the entrance hall. The ornately carved
bannisters seemed to float between newel posts in each section with light flooding in from above.
Walking between columns, you would arrive in the main hall, stretching to the rear of the house
with chevron patterned floors seeming to point towards the harbor. A grand fireplace was centered
on the wall, guests exaggerated that it was large enough to burn an entire tree in one night.
The study overlooked the main hall with a balcony created from a choir stall from a French church.
The drawing room, created in the Louis the 15th style,
was also used as a ballroom. With gold trim set against white panels,
and mirrors taking up the space on the walls, light bounced around this lavish space.
The billiards, set off the entrance hall opposite the grand stairs,
was clad in oak paneling with an oversized marble fireplace and decorated with trophies. Guests
could also be entertained from the dining room which carried the same theme of materials with
a more intricately crafted ceiling to rest above the French antiques minimally decorating the room.
Guests might also find themselves stumbling into rooms such as a library
and even an armory complete with weapons and suits of armor.
All throughout the house were works of art by the likeness of Botticellie,
Raphael, Bellini, and artists of the Renaissance era.
But Kitty was leading a double life, and would not live here long.
She was having an affair and would leave Clarence in 1910, running off to Paris with her new lover.
In 1916, clarence began dating Anna Case, who sang in the metropolitan opera as a soprano.
The 2 were quick to fall in love, but would not become married until Kitty’s passing in 1930.
Before they were married, Clarence and Anna would host massive parties and invite exciting guests
such as Charles Lindbergh, a pilot from St. Louis, Missouri and writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In 1925, the Mackays threw a huge party for Edward, Prince of Wales. The mile long driveway
was illuminated with small blue lights and the house was decorated in red white and blue lights,
a patriotic display that could be seen shining bright from New York City across the harbor.
This party inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write a novel. He had considered calling it,
“under the red white and blue,” but later landed on the name The Great Gatsby which
would go on to earn several awards and be made into a movie in the next century.
The good times didn’t last as the stock market would crash in 1929. Clarence did not have a
good head for business and was all but wiped out financially. He was able to keep the property,
but was not able to afford his staff. For rich or for poor, Clarence and Anna tied the knot in 1931,
the following year, the newlywed couple moved into a small farmhouse in a remote section of
their property. Clarence passed away in 1938, and grief stricken Anna left the property to live in a
Manhattan townhouse which would be foreclosed on in 1940. Harbor Hill would continue to be used,
however. Also in 1940, a portion of the estate was rented by the US Army for use as the Roslyn Air
Force Station. By 1947, the house had fallen into disrepair and the decision was made to demolish
with the use of dynamite. Later on, in 1955, John William Mackay the third, Clarence’s son,
sold the entire estate to a developer with plans to build 400 homes where the mansion once stood.
Thank you all for watching, I really hope that you enjoyed this video. Make sure to hit that
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