"Shoremonde" (Centre Island, New York)

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

The North bluff of Centre Island known as Rocky Point was owned for generations by the Ludlam family whose farm house once stood where the Shoremonde Caretaker’s cottage now stands.

The 74 acre site was purchased from the Ludlam family in 1894 by Daniel Le Roy Dresser who had the New York firm of Ambrose and Leak construct a colonial style mansion for him there. Dresser, a descendant of the Le Roy, Fish and Stuyvesant families, rose to become one of the most successful dry goods merchants in New York in the late 19th century. Leveraging his knowledge of the cotton industry, Dresser developed the Trust Company of the Republic which principally engaged in trade finance for the southern cotton industry. Dresser’s appetite for risk expanded and he developed the United States Shipbuilding Company and the trading firm of Dresser & Co. A reversal of his fortunes in 1903 lead to bankruptcy which he successfully settled by 1915. One of Dresser’s sisters, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser was married to George W. Vanderbilt, and another, Natalie Bayard Dresser to John Nicholas Brown. Dresser ultimately committed suicide in the summer of 1915 at the Delta Psi fraternity, St. Anthony Hall, in upper Manhattan.

Dresser’s wife, the former Edith Louise Burnham, sold the estate to W.J. White in the summer of 1908 subsequent to her divorce from Dresser. W. J. White retained ownership of the property for four years.

Ormond G. Smith son of Francis Shubael Smith one of the founders of Street & Smith publishers and a descendant of Shubael Smith, an early settler of Huntington, bought the property in 1912 from White. The architectural firm of Hoppin and Koen was engaged by Smith to build a Georgian brick and limestone mansion 125 feet back from the bluff with commanding views of the sound. Ralph M. Weinrichter was hired to accomplish a very elaborate landscaping scheme including large walled gardens and formal parterres. Smith called his home Graceclyffe and later renamed it Shoremonde. Completed in 1914 it can easily be considered the grandest home ever built on Centre Island. The complex included the main house, a garage, cottage, dairy, water works building and sewage disposal complex on almost 70 acres; it lasted only a few decades.

The estate was purchased in the spring of 1920 by John North and Isabelle Van Wie Willys of the Willys-Overland Motors Corp. The Willyses furnished Shoremonde (renamed "North Cliff") with a magnificent collection of old master paintings, renaissance artwork and 18th century French and English furniture.

Upon Mrs. Willys death the estate was sold in 1945 to Edouard LeRoux, then to Marcel A. Palmaro, Lehman Brothers Partner and consul general of Monaco in the United states. Palmaro razed the main house and constructed a smaller Louis XVI style home on the site. Mr. Palmaro continued to reside there until his death in 1962.

The property was subdivided and the later home on the site of the original house was then purchased by Dr. Henry Clay Frick II, grandson of Henry Clay Frick, the coal mine owner and partner of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Dr. Frick was a noted physician, professor of medicine and former president of the board of the Frick Collection, the art museum in his family's stately former home on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The property has been subdivided multiple times since the 1960's with several large houses constructed on many small lots on the original site. Prominent among these is a recently built very large house (2002) modeled on the Petit Trianon. It occupies 4 of the original 74 acres, between Shoremonde's former garages, the original caretakers cottage, and the Palmaro / Frick mansion, on what was once the site of one of Shoremonde's several parterre gardens.

www.oldlongisland.com/search?q=shoremond
archive.org/details/gri_33125006699728/page/114/mode/2u...
archive.org/details/housegardensbook0wrig/page/113/mode...
tinyurl.com/Shoremonde
www.historicaerials.com/aerials.php?scale=8.79504309913...