"‘The [house] on my right was a colossal affair by any standard–it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion" (Page 7).
"‘... as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music rooms and Restoration salons I felt that there were guests concealed behind every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of the ‘Merton College Library’ I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter. We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms with sunken baths–intruding into one chamber where a dishevelled man was doing liver exercises on the floor… Finally we came to Gatsby’s own apartment, a bedroom and bath and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a glass of Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall" (Page 70).
The Great Gatsby is a novel about the moral and social decay that characterized the uninhibited pursuit of wealth by the rich during the Roaring Twenties. While most of America stagnated in terms of wealth and led unremarkable lives signified by hard work and incessant struggles, the rich grew much richer because of value gains in the stock market and real estate market. The North Shore of Long Island was named the "Gold Coast" because it became an enclave of the fabulously wealth, with the legacy inheritances of "old money" living in a neighborhood called the "East Egg," and the new found nouveau riche living in a neighborhood called the "West Egg." In a modern day context, the West Egg is in the peninsula called Great Neck, which is comprised of nine villages. The village that is highlighted in The Great Gatsby is the Village of Kings Point, which is at the northeastern point of the peninsula. The East Egg is the neighboring peninsula called Port Washington, which has four villages. The Village of Sands Point, which covers the northern tip of the peninsula.
The grandiose affluence of the rich provide the backdrop against which The Great Gatsby was written. The rich are portrayed as being far from aspirational. Rather, they are depicted as being self-gratifying, careless, and wasteful. The Gold Coast of Long Island, with its palatial residences, opulence, and lavish excess, has promulgated the myth of the self-made individual, that individual betterment through sustained diligence and strength of character would lead to tremendous wealth. The Great Gatsby, while fictional, uses wealth as symbolism, and the huge mansions on the Gold Coast of Long Island are the embodiment of such wealth. The era of the North Shore estates began during the Gilded Age and it reached its peak in the 1920s. During the Roaring Twenties. there were about six hundred estates along the Gold Coast, occupying more than 120,000 acres. The North Shore estates mimicked English, French, and Italian architecture from the 1600s to 1800s.
"Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size" (Page 7).
"I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season" (Page 7).
""You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there." "I don’t know a single—" "You must know Gatsby." "Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?" (Page 12).
In 1992, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society held its first conference at Hofstra University. https://fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org/conferences/past-conferences/ Many scholars who showed up wanted to know the precise locations of the Gatsby and Buchanan homes, where the Green Light was, and whether Fitzgerald had been a guest at those estates. Many of these scholars were convinced that the "East Egg" and "West Egg" were local designations for the Villages of Sands Point and Kings Point respectively in the peninsulas of Port Washington and Great Neck respectively. Many of these scholars were genuinely disappointed and had a difficult time accepting that all the descriptions were figments of Fitzgerald's imagination, and the Green Light does not exist. https://spinzialongislandestates.com/GATSBY.pdf
Oheka Castle https://www.oheka.com/
The first place I visited was Oheka Castle in the Village of Huntington. It is the largest of the North Shore Gold Coast estates and it is the second largest private home in America, behind the Biltmore, the Vanderbilt estate in North Carolina. It features 23.2 acres and the size of the property is 109,000 square feet. The first owner of Oheka Castle was Otto Hermann Kahn, a wealthy German-born banker who was also known as the "King of New York." Despite his wealth, charisma and success as a banker, he was Jewish and was not even allowed to enter the golf course that was adjacent to his property. Just like Jay Gatsby, Mr. Kahn could not buy everyone's love, and the prejudices which Mr. Kahn endured persist today. Mr. Kahn spared no expense building Oheka Castle. It was a location where lavish parties were thrown, and many celebrities, powerful politicians, and business leaders were invited to dine at the property. Some of these celebrities included Charlie Chaplin and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was fortunate to meet Mr. Gary Melius, the current owner of Oheka Castle, who lives on the property as well.
Fitzgerald was a friend of Mr. Kahn. Fitzgerald visited and dined at the mansion on multiple occasions. Oheka Castle provided Fitzgerald with the inspiration for the Jay Gatsby character and his fictional home. In 1922, Fitzgerald was reportedly staying in a rented home in Peninsula of Great Neck, probably at Kings Point, which he identified as the "West Egg" in the book. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society reports that Fitzgerald did not start writing The Great Gatsby in earnest until April 1924, after he had moved to Europe. The novel was published while he was living in the French Riveria, and he did not leave France until 1926..
I participated in a guided tour of the beautiful historical landmark hotel and ate lunch at the Oheka Castle Restaurant, which is physically located less than a hundred feet from the dining room where Fitzgerald actually dined.
An aerial photograph of the original Oheka Castle, as built by Otto Hermann Kahn. https://spinzialongislandestates.com/GATSBY.pdf
My video of the entrance to Oheka Castle. All video is prohibited inside the property.
277015754_1099804177478462_7345902317974943829_n.MP4This is a photo carousel slide show.