One of the best preserved Gold Coast estates in NY

Lillian Sefton Dodge Estate, Mill Neck New York

Date added: June 23, 2024 Categories:

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The Mill Neck Manor Lutheran School for the Deaf occupies the former Lillian Sefton Dodge estate in Mill Neck. It is a well-preserved Long Island Gold Coast estate and an excellent example of the sensitive adaptive reuse of an estate as a school. The main house was designed in 1923 in the Tudor Revival style by Clinton and Russell of New York City with Charles Leavitt as landscape architect. Since its purchase in 1949 by the Lutheran Friends of the Deaf, parts of the estate were sympathetically adapted for school use by Richard Burke of Sea Cliff; and in 1967 and 1971 new buildings were added by Knappe and Johnson of Garden City in keeping with the original design. Most of the original landscaping survives in outline.

The Architectural firm of Clinton and Russell was formed in 1894 by Charles W. Clinton, who apprenticed under Richard Upjohn; and William H. Russell, who had worked with his uncle James Renwick. Subsequently, more partners entered the firm by 1923 it was known as Clinton & Russell, Well, Holton, and George. The firm designed many estates and office towers in the New York City area, notably the Cities Service Building at 7O Pine Street, the Hotel Astor, New York Athletic Club, Brown Brothers Building, the Apthorp Apartments, and the two Rhinelander Buildings. Colonel James H. Wells appears to have been the partner who had the closest association with the Dodges and Sefton Manor. Wells was born in England which may have accounted for his association with the Dodges. Mrs. Dodge was the daughter of an Englishman and maintained a deep interest in England throughout her life. One expression of this was the Tudor style of Sefton Manor.

Lillian Sefton Dodge was the president of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, Inc., a cosmetics firm founded in 1907 by her first husband Vincent B. Thomas. While she was president the firm became one of the largest in the world and in 1938 Mrs. Dodge was considered the highest-paid woman executive in the United States. The company was sold to Lever Brothers in 1947 upon Mrs. Dodge's retirement.

The Mill Neck Manor Lutheran School for the Deaf in Mill Neck, New York is one of the best-preserved Gold Coast estates and an excellent example of a former estate that has been sympathetically adapted and added to as a school. Throughout its history, it has been owned by only two parties, the Dodge family and the Lutheran Friends of the Deaf who purchased it in 1949.

It was one of the major Long Island commissions of the fashionable 1920s architectural firm of Clinton and Russell, with Colonel James H. Wells in charge of the design. The largely intact Charles Leavitt designed landscape complements the estate building complex. A great deal of attention was paid to building and garden placement.

Site Description

The Mill Neck Manor Lutheran School for the Deaf is the former Lillian Sefton Dodge estate known as Sefton Manor. It is located in Mill Neck, a part of Nassau County's former Gold Coast that retains its early twentieth-century bucolic character. The main house is situated near the middle of the park-like, eighty-six-acre property at the top of a rise facing due west down a vast expanse of lawn. Several hundred yards northeast is a rambling, picturesque, half-timbered complex of farm buildings. Additional original accessory buildings dot the grounds to the northwest In 1967 and 1971 new classrooms and a recreation hall were added to the estate just east of the main house around the circular drive. Although modern in style, they are in keeping with the style of the estate, nestled into the landscape with forceful Mansard roofs and sympathetically sheathed in granite. Entrance to the estate is gained via a wide, two-lane drive impressively lined with beech trees.

The manor house, designed in 1923 by the firm of Clinton and Russell, is a classic early twentieth-century Tudor Revival design. It is two and one-half stories high with a full basement, of steel frame construction. Faced with brown Westchester granite and trimmed in tawny limestone.

The grey slate roof is perforated by gabled granite dormers and granite chimneys surmounted by chimney pots. The house is divided into two main blocks with the service wing extending south. Lower and less detailed than the main block, it terminates in an extended gable end. The main block is almost completely symmetrical on both facades, framed with massive gables at each end facing east and west. The gables on the east, entrance facade are flush with the central block, extending outward on the first two stories in the form of five-sided, balustraded bays. The central main door is sheltered by a one-story porch said to be similar to the ones at Great Chatfield Manor, Wiltshire, and Compton Wynates. It is flanked by original iron lanterns and surmounted by a carved stone crest. The most impressive element of this facade is the group of five stained-glass windows above the porch, described in more detail in the interior description. The west facade, reportedly based on the front of St. Catherine's Court, Somersetshire, is framed by gables that project slightly from the central block. The south gable projects into a three-sided bay at ground level. In the center is a narrow five-sided bay, two stories tall, surmounted by a balustrade, giving access directly to the Great Hall. A broad balustraded terrace extends the length of the house on this side, approached from the lawn by a Flight of ten steps. Roofed and balustraded porches project from the house at the north and south ends.

Entrance to the house is made through the central east doorway into a vestibule that leads into the twenty-four by forty-two foot Great Hall. Like the rest of the ground floor rooms, this impressive hall retains its original floors of double-pegged hardwood boards and oak paneling from floor to cornice. The Tudor-arched windows are decorated with leaded glass and stained-glass medallions by Charles Connick of Boston.

The stone chimneypiece designed for the house in the French Gothic style rises from hearth to cornice with elaborately carved griffin heads, crocketed pilasters, mythical birds, medallions, and shields. The molded plaster ceiling with its foliate spirals and cornices was designed for the house and is said to be based on the one in the Oak Room of Burton Agnes, Yorkshire, built in 1600-3. The bronze chandeliers and wall sconces are original and were executed in France. North of the Great Hall is the original drawing room, forty-two by twenty-four feet in size, now used as a chapel. It retains its Elizabethan-style plaster ceiling and bronze entrance gate screens made by Edwin Brandt of Paris. South of the Great Hall is the dining room featuring a stone mantel copied from one in the audience chamber at Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire. The most dramatic element of the interior is the set of five stained-glass windows illuminating the stairhall mentioned in the exterior description. These windows were designed and executed by Charles Connick of Boston and illustrate five Shakespearean themes.

The second floor is occupied by guest rooms, a daughter's room, and Mrs. Dodge's bedroom in the north wing, now used as a nursery playroom. The third floor is taken up by a billiard room, guest room, and several storage and servants' rooms which have been remodeled as a cathedral-ceilinged library.

The estate retains the architectural framework of its rectangular formal garden, just north of the main house, designed by Charles Leavitt. Three small domed tempiettos of smooth stone (Morning, Mid-Day and Evening temples) stand at the points of a T-shaped canal which bisects the sunken center of the garden. Stone urns, copies of eighteenth-century originals, stand on plinths at intervals between the temples and there is an eighteenth-century Venetian tiered fountain near the middle of the composition. Within the well-defined border a flagstone walk connects the three temples.

The Tudor-style half-timbered farm complex stands northeast of the main house. The complex's interiors have been remodeled as offices and teachers' residences by Richard Burke of Sea Cliff. Originally the group contained the following quarters (proceeding northwest to south west) in a rambling fashion interconnected by covered walkways: superintendent's residence, dairy, conical-roofed silo, barn, quarters for dairymen and chauffeur, and garage. In the northwest corner of the estate survives the greenhouse and a garage, both designed in the half-timbered style.

Two modern buildings were added to the estate complex in 1967 and 1971. Located to the east of the main house, the low, earth-toned masonry buildings blend in with the landscape as well as with the other estate structures. Both were designed by the architectural firm of Knappe and Johnson of Garden City. The recreation hall is a two-story brick, concrete and glass structure made up of a series of round and geometric masses. The very long, low classroom building is dominated by a large mansard roof. Bands of glass windows separated by stone walls emphasize the extreme horizontality of the structure.