Whether you're a billionaire looking for your next home or a curious traveler, these houses are worth checking out.
Take an elegant journey through America’s greatest estates from a bygone era: See gold-leaf ceilings, indoor swimming pools and more at some very posh places sure to leave you a bit ... envious.
A great building can be a font of inspiration. For each of these eight authors, a castle, mansion, hotel, or family home served as a literary muse
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OHEKA CASTLE Hotel & Estate is a Wedding Venue in Serving LI and NYC, NY. Read reviews, view photos, see special offers, and contact OHEKA CASTLE Hotel & Estate directly on The Knot.
We've rounded up America's best historic homes you have to visit. From the Hearst Castle in California to The Breakers in Rhode Island, check them out here!
Renting a historical home can be a lot of fun, especially when it's a place you've had your eye on for a while. Check out our list of historic spots!
'Oheka', the Otto Hermann Kahn estate in Cold Spring Harbor designed by Delano & Aldrich between 1915-17 and which sat on over 500 acres. Kahn was one of Jacob Schiff's proteges at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and made his fortune mostly in railroads. He was a patron of the arts and was the director of the Metropolitan Opera. Kahn helped break stereotypes of Jews at the time who were excluded from gentile society. His house was the second largest private residence in the country (George Vanderbilt's 'Biltmore' being the first). Following Kahn's death the house became a retreat for sanitation workers from NYC and eventually a military academy. In 1984 the house was purchased and resurrected as a hotel and catering hall, the website of which can be found HERE. Click HERE to see 'Oheka on Demand', a new feature on their website which has old newsreel footage of the estate and of Kahn himself. Click HERE to see 'Oheka' on google earth. The entrance into the courtyard. The rear. The garden facade and garden designed by the Olmsted Brothers. The entire garden had to be restored as it had been almost entirely destroyed during it's life as a military academy. The view from the front of the courtyard.
Oheka Castle Fine Art Prints Almost a century ago, financier and philanthropist Otto Hermann Kahn built Oheka Castle in the middle of a 443 acre plot on the highest point on Long Island in Cold Spring Harbor, for an estimated cost of $11 million dollars ($110 million dollars in today’s currency). At the time of its construction, the French-style chateau was, and still is today, the second-largest private residence ever built in America. During the Gilded Age of the 1920’s, Kahn used the 109,000 square foot, 127 room estate as a summer home where he hosted lavish parties and regularly entertained royalty, heads of state, and Hollywood stars. After Otto Kahn died in 1934, the estate changed hands several times, serving as a retreat for New York sanitation workers, and a government training school for Merchant Marine radio operators. In 1948, the Eastern Military Academy bought Oheka, bulldozed the gardens, subdivided the rooms and painted over the walls. After the school went bankrupt 30 years later, Oheka stood abandoned, except by vandals who set numerous fires over 5 years. In 1984, developer Gary Melius purchased Oheka and the remaining 23 acres which surrounded the estate and began the painstaking challenge of restoring the Castle to its original grandeur. Today, Oheka is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is admired as a premier venue to host society weddings, gala celebrations, and corporate retreats. Oheka is also an historic hotel with 32 luxury guestrooms and suites on the upper floors of the estate and has been the backdrop to many famous music, television, film and photo productions since the making of the classic film, "Citizen Kane", to the present day TV series, "Royal Pains". Mansion Tours of the estate and gardens offer guests the unique opportunity to learn about Oheka's rich history and experience the grandeur of this magnificent estate. Camera Data Make:Canon Model:Canon EOS 5D Shutter Speed:1/256 second Aperture:F/7.1 Focal Length:105 mm ISO Speed:50 Date Taken:Jan 10, 2013, 4:42:09 PM Software:Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Sensor Size:29mm
During their first year of dating, Jonathan Velez surprised Arissa Chonis with a weekend getaway at a famed Montauk resort over Presidents’ Day Weekend. It was…
From California’s Hearst Castle to North Carolina’s Biltmore Estate to New York’s Belvedere Castle, tour the stunning strongholds and citadels across America
Otto Hermann Kahn sculpted the highest hill on Long Island's Gold Coast one horse-drawn wagon full of dirt at time just so that he could perch a massive mansion on top. Oheka Castle , which takes its sobriquet from the first letters of its founder's three names, still stands two miles from the Long Island Sound, still presides over magnificent gardens, and still hosts the literary speculators who've been arriving at the gates since the 1920s to investigate the possibility that Kahn's famous parties inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write 'The Great Gatsby.' "We don't have all the guest lists," says Nancy Melius, whose father Gary spent $40 million restoring the ruined Huntington, N.Y. property he fell for in 1983 into the belle époque hotel it is today. "But these walls can talk." Otto Kahn, whose white mustache cane and regal wardrobe inspired the Monopoly character "Rich Uncle Pennybags," certainly wasn't as dashing as Jay Gatsby – Leonardo DiCaprio's Gatsby anyway – but he was just as ambitious. The German-born British banker arrived in New York at age 26 and quickly set about making himself the center of the then prestigious Long Island social circuit. Oheka's 73-foot-long ballroom, dripping with crystal chandeliers, is a monument to Kahn's outgoing nature, as is the secret passageway that winds from behind an innocent looking bookcase into a private room where he was said to have bedded starlets during parties attended by comedian Charlie Chaplin and composer Alberto Toscanini. In fact, the key difference between Oheka and Jay Gatsby's manse seems to be that the former was purpose built for a social butterfly while the latter was a cathedral to loneliness. Just 23 acres of the 443 acres Kahn bought for $11 million in 1914 remain part of the Oheka estate – but what a 23. The Melius family painstakingly re-created the lavish embellishment of the Gilded Era, sourcing tile for the roof from the same quarry in Vermont as Kahn and remaking elaborate wrought iron railings. The 32 guest rooms are each garnished with elaborate moldings, plump couches, and romantic paintings. The Gatsby suites have massive bathrooms intended for multiple occupants. Because of its resilient grandeur, the castle is now mainly used for weddings and banquets. Visitors on the daily tours through the grounds are more likely to know that they were featured on the USA Network show ' Royal Pains ' than that they were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who planned Central Park, or that they might have been the fertile soil from which the great American novel bloomed. The Melius family is hoping that the renewed interest in Gatsby stemming from the release of Baz Luhrmann's new blockbuster might reinvigorate researchers poring through the 459 boxes of Otto Kahn's document's stored in Princeton's Firestone Library. The great hope is that a guest list including Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald might someday come to light, delighting hoteliers and scholars alike. But one doesn't associate 'The Great Gatsby' with happy endings and Oheka's walls, hung as they are with art and colorful paper, do speak for themselves. The hotel doesn't have to have informed an inspired book to be an inspiration for future visitors. More information: Take a tour of Oheka Castle , plus two other historic homes as part of the two-night Gold Coast Mansion Gatsby Package ($895) or attend the castle's annual costumes-encouraged Garden Party on June 12.
