"Plandome Manor"/"Littlecote" (Plandome Manor, New York)

 residence, LIGC - Long Island Gold Coast, historical layer / disappeared object

Original colonial manor home built in 1670's by Matthias Nicoll, once center of a 1200 acre plantation on so called Cow Neck. He or his son said to have penned the name Plandome, from the Latin 'planus domus' meaning "plain" or "level" home. Nicoll was Secretary to Colonel Richard Nicolls, who forced the surrender of Dutch New Amsterdam back to the English. Nicoll also served at the Duke's Laws Assembly, served as Mayor of New York City from 1672-73, and was Speaker of the first Colonial Assembly. He and his wife were buried on the property.

His son, William inherited the property and acquired four hundred additional acres. In 1693 he commissioned Joseph Latham, master shipwright, to build a tidewater Gristmill (Plandome Mill) on the bay. In 1718 he sold over 600 acres with the manor house and mill to Latham and moved to his Suffolk estate, Islip, named after the Nicoll's ancestral home in England. It was reported that the home was occupied by Hessian Colonel Janecke during the 1770's. The property passed thru the Latham family eventually to Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchell, US Representative, US Senator in 1804-09, gave the address at the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825.

By the early 1900's Martin Wiley Littleton, an attorney, judge, and US Representative from NY owned the estate. He purchased it in June 1912. Littleton defended Harry Thaw in the Stanford White murder trail. Ice house on property said to have stored munitions during the Revolutionary War. An outbuilding is believed to have been a stop on the "underground railroad" line in Cow Bay. There was also a secret tunnel which was originally built around the time of the American Revolution. It is thought that most of the conducting was by freed blacks who were employed on the estate. He renamed the estate "Littlecote".

The original manor home was torn down without a permit in 1999 by the new owner of the property, attorney John Ioannou, who went to jail in 2013 for client embezzlement. The former library at 290 Bayview Road still stands as a private residence.

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