The Manse

The Manse was built on a 1000-acre estate which included a race track and golf course that Whitney had purchased in the 1890s both as a convenient country retreat and a place to rear his thoroughbred horses. The property is noted for the vast complex of stables (850-feet long, 60-feet wide with a depth of a 100-feet) put up by a team of 75-carpenters. Unfortunately for Whitney, his second wife, Edith, died following a fall from her horse while riding to hounds on the estate, three years before the house was finished.

Designed by Howells & Stokes, just two years after its completion Whitney also died and the estate was left to his eldest son, Harry Payne Whitney. Harry was the husband of Gertrude Vanderbilt who was more than just a society heiress, she was also the exceedingly talented sculptress who founded the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Harry and Gertrude recalled McKim, Mead & White to undertake a few alterations to the not-so-old house between 1906 and 1910. They added two separate new buildings, one that housed an indoor pool and tennis court, and another that was Gertrude's studio. The studio was built in the Palladian-style with its own furnace that looked out over formal gardens. Their only son, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, recalled growing up here in his memoirs High Peaks (1977),  

Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney (1899-1992) grew up to become a co-founder of Pan-Am Airlines and the co-producer of several well-known movies including Gone with the Wind in 1939. Perhaps with that film in mind, in 1942 he knocked down The Manse in favor of building a 30-room plantation-style manor designed by Delano & Aldrich which is today the clubhouse for the Old Westbury Golf & Country Club.