$49M Long Island mansion may face wrecking ball: civic groups

Inisfada in North Hills, N.Y.
Inisfada in North Hills, N.Y.

Long Island civic groups are worried that an 87-room, Elizabethan-Tudor-style mansion on the North Shore is headed for demolition, the New York Times reported.

The 33-acre Jazz Age-era estate that holds the building known as Inisfada was listed last year for $49 million, and the owners — a group of Jesuits — are close to selling to an unnamed developer from Hong Kong. Preservationists suspect the developer will tear down the building as part of a proposal to erect a gated community of luxury homes, Richard Bentley of the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Association told the Times.

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The council is forming a grassroots campaign to preserve the mansion from its purported fate, Bentley said.

The house was built in 1920 for industrialist Nicholas Brady, who ran several utility companies. After he died, his wife donated the home in 1937 to the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, the local branch of the Jesuits. The group made it a seminary and eventually the Saint Ignatius Retreat House, the report said. [NYT] Mark Maurer