Former Estate and Mansion of Paint Company Founder

Benjamin Moore Estate, Muttontown New York

Date added: June 22, 2024 Categories:

Main House, moat and rear elevation (1977)

Do you have an update on the current status of this structure? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

Chelsea is the former Benjamin Moore estate, one of the best-preserved of Long Island's Gold Coast mansions. The 1923-4 estate and its 1929 additions were designed by William Adams Delano, of the well-known firm of Delano and Aldrich, in an unusual eclectic combination of Chinese and French Renaissance elements. The grounds, also designed by Delano with the assistance of Mrs. Alexandra Moore and Umberto Innocenti of Innocenti and Webel, preserve one of the more imaginative landscape designs of the period. Still in private residential use, the estate is near the center of the Muttontown Preserve, a five-hundred-acre nature preserve owned by Nassau County, much of which was contributed by the Moore's over the past forty years.

The Moores (of Benjamin Moore Paint Company), longtime New York City residents, were moved to build the estate on a trip to the Orient in 1920-22. Mrs. McKay (Moore) reminisced: "We saw a house on the Upper Yangtze River that we saw when we were on a boat … It was white with a black roof and had cattle in the courtyard and water around the corner. We decided right then and there that we wanted to try to reproduce that." They chose William Delano who lived nearby in Syosset as the architect because "We looked for somebody … who would do what we wanted … He was a charming person and easy to work with." In 1903, William Delano and Chester Aldfich established partnership. The firm designed many buildings of note, both public and residential. Some of their best-known works were the Colony and Knickerbocker Clubs in New York, Hotchkiss School, John D. Rockefeller's estate at Pocantico Hills, Otto Kahn's estate in Cold Spring Harbor, and Washington's 1933 Post Office Department Building.

The main house is small in relation to the whole estate, reflecting fashionable 1920s thinking about estate design. It was felt then that elegance and luxury could be accommodated in more restrained, less ostentatious settings than those provided before. Chelsea represented a new kind of romanticism in its simple design which was based less on its historic imagery than on saner, more urbane interiors and more carefully studied skylines and plans. While the building's severe, planar facade and minimal ornament indicate a rational approach to design, more picturesque attitudes are evident in the house's land-hugging profile, rambling roof, and corner moat. The size and placement of the rooms defined the asymmetrical plan and shape of the house.

Concerned with the effects of climate, Delano oriented the house north-south, affording sunlight for the living room and bedrooms and the cooler northern exposure for the more functional elements like the entry and staircase. The service wing, the least important part of the house in terms of the hierarchy of social life, is partly hidden by landscaping. While Delano often designed the interiors of his houses, the Moores furnished theirs themselves.

The land was purchased in 1923 and the house was completed in 1925, The Moores used it as their principal residence and never owned a house in New York City, unlike many contemporaries who used their Gold Coast estates only seasonally. The estate reached its greatest extent in the late 1920s, about one hundred twenty acres. After the death of Benjamin Moore, his widow married Robert Gordon McKay, an investment banker and lifelong friend, in 1957. After his death in 1958, Mrs. McKay continued to occupy the estate with her children. In 1964 part of the estate was donated to the county to serve as a nature preserve, now the second-largest park in the county,

Site Description

Chelsea, the forty-two-acre Benjamin Moore Estate, is located southwest of the intersection of Routes 25A and 106 in Muttontown in the heart of Long Island's Gold Coast. The main house, outbuildings, and surviving gardens of the original estate are still in private residential use. The property will become part of the five hundred-acre Muttontown Preserve upon the death of Mrs. (Moore) McKay, the original owner.

The major approach to the estate winds south from Route 25A through picturesquely landscaped grounds to the central driving court and main house. The house is fronted by a broad lawn lined with trees and bordered at the northern end by a brick wall inspired by the wall of the Summer Palace in Peking. The estate's present forty-two acres include the property's most significant landscape and architectural features. The property consists of the gatehouse, picturesque roadways, a garage, conservatory, main house, elaborate gardens, octagonal gazebo, shed and tool house, and large open lawns.

The main estate building was designed in 1923-4 by William Delano in an unusual eclectic design incorporating Chinese and French Renaissance sources. It is roughly U-shaped, two and one-half stories high, hip and gable-roofed, and covered with whitewashed concrete block on a concrete foundation. The alignment of first-story casement windows with a row of bulls-eye windows above emphasizes the horizontality of the main facade, typical of Delano's style. The steeply pitched roof further attenuates the facade. Interrupting the striking simplicity of this facade are the undulating roof, four irregularly spaced chimneys, and a large brick tourelle with a conical roof. The off-center entrance is framed with a simple molded architrave and a modest, shaped pediment embracing a cartouche. In contrast to the severe front, the rear of the house is a romantic profusion of varying projections and roof and wall treatments. Specifically reminiscent of seventeenth-century French manor house architecture are the shaped terraces, steeply pitched roof, elongated casement windows, and tourelle-like projections terminating in engaged, conical roofs. The western ell of the house was the original service wing. The eastern ell contains a gallery and open arcade facing a flagstoned terrace. The wing is continued in a two-and-one-half story, hip-roofed section housing the living room on the ground Floor. The hip-roofed service wing added by Delano in 1929 is attached to the east end of the main house with a brick, arcaded porte-cochere. The house's site is enhanced by a complex set of gardens, fountains, hedges, and lily pond. Belgian blocks line the moat, which surrounds the southeast corner of the mansion. Bridges cross the moat on the east and south elevations and separate the house from the grounds.

The interior of the house features furnishings purchased by the Moores on numerous shopping trips to Europe. Perhaps the most notable of these is the dining room west of the entrance hall which was originally the Duke of Wellington's breakfast room at Stratford-Saye. This impressive, formal room is paneled in antique pine and features a pedimented overmantel. From this space a small, oval breakfast room leads to the original service area of the house at the western end. The library, west of the entry, is enriched by built-in bookcases and an overmantel in the Louis XV style. The most impressive feature of the interior is the long gallery extending from the front hall to the living room at the southern extremity. On one side, facing the moat, bay windows alternate with screens decorated by Jose Maria Sert (c.1925). A wrought iron spiral staircase articulated on the exterior by a brick turret yields access to the second floor occupied by bedrooms and sitting rooms and by servants' accommodations above the service wing. The 1929 service wing houses guest rooms and a school room.

The garage, located to the north of the main house, is modest in design and covered in white stucco. The hip-roofed, I-shaped structure has two, two-story houses on either side of a long, one-story automobile bay. The south facade of the bay functions as a wall that encloses the front lawn. Across from the garage and a small stream are three long low wooden buildings, utilitarian in style.

The conservatory, east of the garage, consists of a large greenhouse attached to a modest, stuccoed, two-story house. An octagonal, wooden gazebo is located to the south of the conservatory.

The estate's gatehouse is located off North Hempstead Turnpike, northwest of the main house. The stuccoed, two-and-one-half-story house is three bays wide and in the style of the main house. Its steep hip roof is pierced by dormers.