Oak Hill

Cynthia and Arthur were married to great fanfare in 1906 and anyone who was anyone from Newport, Hempstead and Tuxedo received an invitation. Cynthia and her husband's sister-in-law, Natica Rives Burden, were close friends and, "girls of exceptional charm and vivacity (with) few rivals for popularity". Together with their husbands they moved in one of the smartest sets with the brothers Freddy and Reginald Vanderbilt. But for all the privileges it seemed that life had given them, all of their set except Cynthia would be dead by 1925, and all died in tragic circumstances, no more so than Arthur Burden himself.

Arthur had purchased a seat on the New York Stock Exchange but he was forced to stop working after a bad fall from his horse while fox-hunting in England. Unwisely, he insisted he was still capable of playing polo but was thrown from his pony in 1913 here at his estate on Long Island. He never recovered and his health both mentally and physically deteriorated rapidly so that by 1920 he was declared incompetent of being able to manage his affairs and was confined to a clinic where he died fourteen months later.

Barely over a year later, his widow married Guy Fairfax Cary at Elm Court in Newport. They lived at the Cary House in Manhattan and maintained Burden's Long Island estate as a country home to which they gave the name "Oak Hill". After Guy Cary died in 1950 his heirs sold the estate and it was demolished in the same decade for development.