Caumsett Manor - Marshall Field Estate, Cold Spring Harbor New York

Date added: December 20, 2016

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Caumsett Manor is one of the last grand mansions on Long Island retaining most of its acreage and outbuildings. It is a fine example of English Georgian design adapted for a 20^th century American country estate. Built in 1924-25 for use as a hunting lodge and farm, the estate was designed by architect, John Russell Pope for Marshall Field.

The house has been reduced from its original monumental proportions. The west wing containing the living room and master bedrooms and the east wing which contained servants' quarters have been demolished. The original dining room has been converted to a kitchen. Subsidiary first-floor rooms have been converted to a living room, dining room and library, all much smaller than the rooms which originally served these purposes. The second floor has nine remaining bedrooms, three of which have excellent water views, plus servants' bedrooms. The third floor has a variety of storage and service rooms.

There are two other houses on the estate, the brick Summer Cottage of 27 rooms, and the stone Winter Cottage of 12 rooms. Although numerous small buildings have been demolished, the estate still has an impressive Shingle-style farm complex where prize Guernsey cattle were raised, several servants' cottages, a gate house, beach house, garage, and a monumental polo stable with living quarters.

The acreage now included in the boundaries of the state park is a major part of the Lloyd Neck peninsula, bounded on the south by Lloyd Harbor, on the east by Huntington Bay, and on the west by Oyster Bay. The geological importance of the area is underscored by the fact that on the property are red homatite shaly rocks containing the leaf fossils of the first flowering trees to evolve on earth, and that, in the face of the bluff at the east end of the beach on the sound side, can be found the petrified trunks of those trees.

The Matinecock Indians (Algonquin tribe) first occupied the land and gave the area the name "Caumsit", meaning "place of the sharpening stones." Archeological investigation in the vicinity of the Henry Lloyd House has revealed the "remains of a prehistoric occupation that showed unusual productivity and integrity. The on-location archeological investigation and testing was conducted in 1975 by Sarah T. Bridges, staff archaeologist, Division for Historic Preservation, Department of Parks and Recreation, Albany, New York, and in 1977 by John Vefter, Chairman, Department of Anthropology, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York. On September 20^th, 1654, Lloyd Neck was conveyed by the Indians to the first white settlers.

Approximately half of the original parcel came into the possession of James Lloyd through his marriage to Grizzell Sylvester on July 13^th, 1676. Lloyd secured the remaining part of the peninsula (then an island) about two years later. In 1685, Thomas Dongan, then Lieutenant Governor of New York, granted Lloyd his lands as the Lordship and Manor of Queens Village.

The manor house, built in 1711 by James' third son Henry, is what remains of a productive eighteenth and nineteenth-century gentleman's farm. In massing, fenestration, handling of roof and eaves, simplicity of detailing, and treatment of later additions to produce a characteristic irregularity of outline and a clear expression of cumulative growth, the similarities between this house and those of the same period in Connecticut and Massachusetts are clear. The floor plan, in the original section also follows the New England tradition. The house has an entrance through a small interior porch, two rooms flanking a large central fireplace block, a winding, closed-string stair to the second floor, and a cellar extending beneath only one of the major original rooms. An important aspect of the property's social history during the Lloyd ownership concerns the fact that Jupiter Hammon, America's first black poet, was born on the manor on October 17^th, 1711, and lived there all his life as a Slave.

In 1921, Marshall Field III, grandson of the Chicago department store pioneer, and his wife Evelyn, purchased approximately two thousand acres of the original Lloyd Neck parcel. Field's goal was to create a self-supporting country seat named Caumsett to serve as a home, hunting preserve, cattle breeding farm, and dairy. As his chief assistant in this endeavor, he chose one of America's foremost architects in the Classic tradition, John Russell Pope. Pope was trained at Columbia University, the American Academy in Rome, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He was experienced in design, site planning, construction, and engineering, and possessed substantial business acumen. His work covered a versatile range of public buildings, colleges, churches, hospitals, memorials, and private homes. Pope's reputation as an architect of upper income residences is closely related to his use of formal, classically inspired architectural idioms. The early 1920's Field estate commission may have been one of Pope's most extensive and complex residential undertakings, carried out during the height of his architectural career. For the Marshall Fields, Pope produced a superb Georgian Revival mansion and a complex of dependencies, which today constitute the best-preserved of the many early twentieth-century Long Island country estates. "Money was not a factor, but throughout, a feeling of rightness, beauty, and complete workability of the finished whole seemed most important." Caumsett was designed to be a truly self-sustaining country seat. The estate had its own independent electric supply and water systems (still in operation), its own fire-fighting apparatus, complete dairy and refrigeration facilities, various gardens, a stable of polo and racing horses, a world-renowned breed of Guernsey cattle, and a support staff of eighty-five.

Marshall Field III died in 1956, leaving Caumsett to his third wife, Ruth Pruyn Phipps Field, and the Field Foundation. On February 2^nd, 1961, Mrs. Field and the Foundation, represented by Adlai Stevenson, sold Caumsett to the State of New York, represented by Robert Moses, then chairman of the Long Island Park Commission. Such a property, so near a metropolitan area and in one of the finest residential sections of the United States, is a marvelous site for a state park. "Its wooded hills, bluffs, meadow land, marsh and beach - all outlined by the variegated waters of the harbor, inlet, and Sound - combine to create an area of great natural beauty. The rolling terrain is enhanced by extensive stands of native shrubs and trees. Freshwater ponds, salt marsh, and tidal wetland each support distinctive plants and wildlife." From its inception as a park, Caumsett has been and will continue to be a limited-access and activity area providing ecologists, environmentalists, persons interested in history and architecture, and particularly students of all ages, an outstanding opportunity to observe, study, and enjoy what man and nature have cooperated to provide.