Inside the Long Island mansion where one bookcase reveals the family’s biggest secret

The Estate Behind the Mansion’s Secret

You walk through iron gates on Long Island’s Gold Coast and the first thing you see is a red brick mansion built to look like it belongs in the English countryside.

Sweeping lawns stretch out behind it, and beyond those, 200 acres of gardens wait to be explored. The house holds a dining room with a famous portrait and a ballroom wrapped in red silk.

But one bookcase inside this mansion hides something the family never wanted found.

A Mansion Built to Feel Like England

English designer George Crawley designed Westbury House between 1904 and 1906, with help from American architect Grosvenor Atterbury.

John Phipps, known as Jay, came from a steel fortune, and he commissioned the mansion to give his English wife, Margarita, a home that felt like the one she left in England.

The Phipps family lived here for more than fifty years before daughter Peggie opened the estate to the public in 1959.

Original Antiques Still Fill Every Room

Once you step inside Westbury House, you find 23 rooms filled with 18th century English antiques. The furniture, paintings, and decor you see are the family’s originals, not replacements brought in later.

Many historic homes lost pieces like these to auctions over the years, but this one kept its collection intact.

You can join a guided tour or wander the rooms on your own, and either way, the house feels like it truly came from the English countryside rather than a recreation of it.

A Churchill Godson Hangs Over Dinner

In the dining room, a portrait by John Singer Sargent hangs above everything else in the room.

It shows Mrs. Henry Phipps standing with her grandson Winston, whose godfather happened to be Winston Churchill himself.

A marble fireplace with carved detailing sits nearby, and the table is set with fine silver, crystal, and china, ready as if the family might walk in for dinner any minute.

You get the sense that this room saw real history unfold over actual meals, not just decoration.

Red Silk Walls Hide a Secret

The Red Ballroom earns its name from walls covered in scarlet damask, with a grand piano and a wide teak parquet floor set up for dancing. French doors swing open onto the terraces, giving you a long view down the lawns.

But the real surprise sits in the study, where a bookcase hides a secret compartment built to store the family’s prized violins. You’d walk right past it without ever guessing what it held.

Inside the Walled Garden’s Lotus Pond

The Walled Garden covers 2½ acres set into the woods, and it’s one of the most popular stops on the whole estate.

A lotus pond, fountains, and a pergola anchor the space, while beds burst with delphiniums, hollyhocks, dahlias, peonies, and roses through the growing season.

Every fall, staff plant more than 7,000 tulip, hyacinth, daffodil, and allium bulbs, so spring brings a different show than summer does. You could visit twice in one year and still find two different gardens.

A Stone Lion Watches Over the Roses

Crawley designed the Rose Garden first, before he took on any other part of the property, and it still stands as one of the estate’s best known formal spaces.

At its center, an ancient English stone sundial with twelve faces keeps watch, topped by a carved stone lion.

Beds of fragrant roses spread out around the sundial in every direction, so the whole space smells as good as it looks. You could spend twenty minutes here just walking the perimeter and reading the sundial’s faces.

More Than 250 Lilacs Bloom in May

Margarita Phipps installed the Lilac Walk herself back in the 1920s, and it became one of her favorite parts of the whole estate.

More than 250 lilacs grow along the path, spread across 30 different varieties, so the colors and shapes shift as you move down the row.

The blooms usually peak during the first two weeks of May, and when they open, the scent fills the air well before you reach the flowers themselves. Time your visit right, and you’ll walk through it.

A Playhouse Fit for a Storybook

You’ll find a thatched cottage among the gardens that looks like it belongs in a storybook.

The Phipps family gave it to their daughter Peggie as a gift for her tenth birthday, and she and the other girls used it as a playhouse for years afterward.

The cottage keeps its own garden growing alongside it, small enough to feel personal rather than grand like the rest of the estate. It remains one of the spots people stop at most on their way through the grounds.

Sphinxes, Gazebos, and a Ghost Walk

The Temple of Love greets you as a stone gazebo topped with a lace like wrought iron roof, the kind of spot that begs for a quiet moment or a photo.

Nearby, a shaded path of Canadian hemlocks forms what everyone calls the Ghost Walk, inspired by the gardens at Battle Abbey back in England.

Stone sphinxes and archways show up in unexpected corners along the way, so you never quite know what you’ll spot next as you wander from one path to another.

Wooded Trails Past a Hundred Tree Types

An allée of linden trees runs from the iron gates straight to the mansion, setting the tone before you even reach the front door.

Beyond the house, sweeping lawns and clipped hedges stretch out as far as you can see, and wooded trails wind past more than 100 varieties of trees.

Naturalistic pools sit among rhododendrons along the way, and the whole estate keeps shifting between wide open vistas and small, quiet corners.

You never walk the same stretch twice and feel the same thing.

A Garden That Changes Every Season

The gardens look different every time you come back, which makes repeat visits worth the drive. Wildflowers open in spring, cherry trees and wisteria follow, and by fall, tulips give way to dahlias in full color.

The Boxwood Garden adds its own note with doric columns framing a fountain, and staff grow much of the plant material on site in a private greenhouse.

Concerts, car shows, and other events fill the calendar throughout the year, so no two visits here ever look quite the same.

Visiting Old Westbury Gardens in New York

If you want to see all of this yourself, Old Westbury Gardens sits at 71 Old Westbury Road in Old Westbury, New York, right in Nassau County.

The house and gardens generally stay open from spring through fall, with the property closed on Tuesdays and open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. the rest of the week.

Admission runs around $22, but check the official website for the latest pricing and any seasonal changes.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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