Vanderbilt Museum Historic House and Planetarium

Centerport

Long Island

One of the most elaborate estates to be found on Long Island’s Gold Coast is Eagle’s Nest, the summer home of railroad baron trust-fund baby William K. Vanderbilt II and family. William “worked” at his family’s New York Central Railroad offices at Grand Central Station in Manhattan, but his real passions were yachting and racing. He had the sort of upraising that allowed him to drop out of Harvard after two years and spend most of his time traveling and enjoying his leisure time. Despite being born into a ridiculously wealthy family, he felt the need to marry Virginia Graham Fair, the wealthy heiress of the Comstock Load mining fortune. Together the two developed the 43-acre estate in Nassau County from 1910 to 1936. Willie K. even started the Vanderbilt Cup, the first major car-racing trophy in the United States, which continued on Long Island until 1968.

The first building phase of Eagle’s Nest was the 24-room Spanish Baroque revival style mansion designed by the same architectural firm that designed New York’s Grand Central Terminal for the Vanderbilt family. On weekends in the summer visitors can take a “Living History” tour where actors portraying friends and family of the Vanderbilts guide groups through the home. This is what piqued my interest in visiting Eagle’s Nest: I love guides in period costume! The term “actor,” however, is a generous one for the individuals who took us through the home on Memorial Day Weekend, the first weekend that the Living History tours are offered. Perhaps they were rusty from not having “performed” since the Labor Day Weekend before, but there was a lot of stumbling through lines and horrible accents.

We were met by a rather shabbily dressed Coco Chanel in a pair of brown loafers I’m sure the real Coco would have never worn. The stories told on the tours are based on the experiences of people who lived nearby and who worked on the estate as teenagers. They also use materials from the museum’s archives, which includes personal letters, journals, and photographs. Coco Chanel left us when she ran into Delia O’Rourke, the Vanderbilt’s Irish cook whose Irish accent made Coco’s French seem Oscar worthy. Things perked up when we met up with Ellin Berlin, the wife of composer Irving Berlin, but the best guide by far was Stirling Vanderbilt, Willie’s brother, who, unfortunately, had to leave us to check on his yacht.

 

I personally was rather disappointed in the Living History tour, but despite the uneven performances Ben thought it was better than a regular tour given in the ordinary manner, so perhaps I had my as usual too-high expectations. I suggest visitors looking for this tour go later in the summer when the actors have had the opportunity to better hone their craft.

The Living History tours began about ten years ago, but people have been visiting Eagle’s Nest since 1922 when Willie opened the Hall of Fishes in his own personal Marine Museum. During Junior’s travels he collected sea life, birds, animals, and cultural artifacts for the museum he planned to build on the Long Island estate. Along with the Marine Museum, rooms in the mansion contain his cultural-artifacts and natural-history collections and the basement contains his 1928 Lincoln touring car, a rare 1909 Reo Gentleman’s Roadster, and a history of the Vanderbilt Cup Races. Willie worked with scientists and artists from the American Museum of Natural History to design the Habitat and Stoll Wings which contains dioramas of animal life, including a 32-foot whale shark, the world’s largest taxidermied fish.

Other highlights of the estate are the rose garden and Corinthian colonnade, and the remains of a 9-hole golf course and salt-water pool, all of which overlook the Northport Bay of Long Island Sound. Willie K. panned on donating his estate to the public as an educational facility and created a trust for it in his will. The county opened the estate as a museum in 1950, and built the planetarium to further the Vanderbilt educational goals in 1970. The carriage house has been turned into an education center for school groups. Visitors during the summer, however, don’t need to worry about large groups of children. It’s best to arrive early if you’re interested in the Living History tour as they tend to sell out. Regular tours are on offer for those not as keen on dramatic interpretation.

There aren’t many dining options in the area, and there’s no café in the Vanderbilt estate, so allow me to recommend The Shack, located about a quarter mile past 86 (Little Neck Road, which leads to Eagle’s Nest) on 25A, just at the start of Stony Hollow Road. As the name implies, it is little more than a roadside shack with modest picnic tables to sit on and no table service, but the unpretentious clams, fries, chowder, and beer are all reasonably priced and welcome in an area lacking dining establishments.

http://www.vanderbiltmuseum.org/