Tucked into the low hills of the Hudson Valley, is the little village of Millbrook, where I have spent the majority of my adult life. Millbrook fancies itself an elite place, and I suppose that's true. However, it is a very small place. When I find myself exploring, say, the north shore of Long Island, as I have in recent weeks, I realize just how small it is. "Inisfada" - perversely pronounced "in-ish-FAH-dah" and meaning "Long Island" in Gaelic - is the sort of house that puts little Millbrook in proper perspective. It is a perfectly immense building, still standing on 33 of its original 225 acres on Searingtown Road in Manhasset. Nicholas F. Brady (1878-1930), grand-uncle of the one-time U.S. Treasury Secretary of the same name, built it between 1916 and 1920. Brady was very rich, very upwardly mobile, and very Catholic. He died before he was sixty, and seven years later his widow gave the house to the Jesuits, who own it today.
This was my introduction to the Gilded age mansions, via the Facebook group of the same name. I originally joined around the time that the petition was going around to save Inisfada. Having done only minimal research up to that point i signed it, and then proceeded to do more research. The decision to demolish Inisfada was a huge offense to my senses, to say the least, and really elevated my love of Big Old Houses and my desire to see them preserved.
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