Walter Ninesling Residence (Great Neck, New York)

 residence, LIGC - Long Island Gold Coast, movie / film / TV location, historic remains

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44 Arrandale Avenue was built on land owned by John J. Matthews, John B. Van Derven, and J. Fred Faigle. Arrandale Avenue was known at the time as Merchant’s Road. The property was surveyed in 1906 and sold that year to developers. It was close to the estates of Brokaw, Alger, Eldridge and Major Tweedle, as well as Hamilton Morgan’s Arrandale farm. Records show that on March 19, 1910, Walter and Ella Ninesling paid a one dollar deposit to Thomas Meade, a friend who also lived on Arrandale Avenue, to build a house for them. It was to cost no less than $2,000; the final expenditures may have totaled $3,000. Walter Ninesling was the owner of a department store at 255 Middle Neck Road where, as one resident remembered, you could get anything from a hammer to a haircut. (Perhaps that is why hair was found mixed in with mud between the lathes of the bathroom walls.) Meade did not use an architect but created the house as he went along. The house is the same size today as it was originally: four stories, with four bedrooms, a wraparound porch and a cedar shake roof. It may have been a rooming house at one time, as most of the rooms had keys. Oddly, it has a 6' x 5' fireplace—but no chimney. And it had a full-sized pool table in the attic (how did it get up the narrow stairs?). There was a huge Franklin stove in the keeping room, and all doors except two are original, with the kitchen doorway measuring only 22" wide. The old garage on the property was built to shelter a buggy.

The landscaping is a fond remembrance of days gone by, transported to 44 Arrandale Avenue by the current owners. Slate paths and the patio material came from the roofs of the demolished Arrandale School and the Kensington-Johnson School. Wood finials were retrieved from an 1858 house. And a multitude of forget-me-nots and other plants in the garden are thriving specimens brought from the gardens of friends with homes throughout Great Neck. After Ella Ninesling died, Walter married Anna Lubin, the Irish girl who was a servant in his home. In 1963, the house was sold by the estate of Anna Lubin Ninesling to John Esposito for $16,800. Esposito owned a fruit and vegetable store at 627 Middle Neck Road.

In 1978, during a winter snowstorm, Jean and Albert Pierce sealed their commitment to purchase the house with a handshake and a $1 deposit. They became only the third owners of this home that is over 110 years old, and have lived for over thirty-seven years. In 2008, furnishings from the house were purchased for the movie "Harold". In June 2014, portions of the house were used as a set for the movie "The Outskirts".

Currently recognized by the Great Neck Historical Society.