"Let us learn to show friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."
"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay... You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock."
"Seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game."
"He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out... I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried... all afternoon."
"I belong to another generation... As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won't impose myself on you any longer."
"This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight."
contact: jross@jenrossphoto.com
©Jen Ross Photography 2011. All rights reserved
To view photos of the house before it was destroyed please visit my website www.jenrossphoto.com
I appreciate your painfully sad but meaningful photos. __ The Devoted Classicist, http://tdclassicist.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteWonderful photos, but,...
ReplyDeleteall sentimentality and old stories aside, a quick look at a map will show the tales about Land's End being the basis for Daisy's home are invented. It is simply geographically impossible for it to have been "the house across the bay". It was located so far north on the coast of Sands Point that it was simply not visible from anywhere in Kings Point or Great Neck.
I think it is the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan's house--I like to think that Fitzgerald took this house and placed it across the bay from Great Neck. The beauty of fiction.
ReplyDeleteLand's End is the inspiration for Daisy's house. On the road seen in my gallery here http://www.jenrossphoto.com/#Portfolio/Spaces/East%20Egg/35 the oldest fence in the area still exists... the wrought iron fence in the photographs was once the entrance to the Belmont Mansion (perhaps the coolest mansion ever to exist on Long Island.) It is said that the Belmont mansion served as the inspiration for Jay Gatsby's house - it would have been brand new at the time it was written and it is just down the road from Land's End. It fits the description well... esp the gate that still exists there. If you stand out on the lawn at Land's End, or even on the beach at Kidd's Rock you can see "across the bay" but it is actually just looking out from one of two points that come out and in between there is a sort of inlet. It creates the sense that Jay Gatsby's house, or the Belmont Mansion is across the bay. From there a green light at the end of a dock would be quite prominent.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that Fitzgerald simply took that view and placed the house over in Great Neck to make the distance between them feel further away, less passable. Seeing the area for yourself you can feel just what Fitzgerald was writing about looking at the spot where the Belmont mansion used to sit from Land's End. Here is a photo of the Belmont Mansion... demolished when it was still pretty new. Here is a fantastic posting on BEACON TOWERS - The Belmont mansion... Jay Gatsby's place :) http://www.oldlongisland.com/2010/02/beacon-towers.html
Oh and I am not sure why Fitzgerald changed it, I don't know about the less passable part... I think I made that up while I was typing. :) Perhaps he has his own reason for doing it - I do not pretend to know but sometimes I think out loud like that. The rest of what I wrote is legit.
ReplyDeletea great record of a great house..thanks Jen ..
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting these photos Jen. I have a collection of mansion photos if you would like to take a look sometime: http://redefinegd.com/photohistory.htm
ReplyDeleteI had to stop taking LI mansion photos in 2006 since I am now living in Florida. Thank for keeping them 'alive' :)
Still trying to make sense of it all. Your work has been magnificent through all these stages of destruction. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteJen,
ReplyDeleteDo you know that the Brodskys are using one of your photos on their website? http://seagateatsandspoint.com/propertyHistory.html
Gross doesn't even start to describe it.
Wow thanks for this info Glam, I am not sure what to make of or do about that!
ReplyDeleteJen all you would have to do is contact them and say you would prefer to have the photo removed since they did not ask permission to use it. If they ask you for permission it would of course be up to you if they should use it. Such gorgeous photos early on and such sad ones at the end. Thank you for them..
ReplyDeleteThank you friends for informing me. My photo has been taken down now. It took a while... I never granted permission for them to use that photo at any point during the three months they were using it illegally.
ReplyDeleteWow what amazing images. It's so painful to see the sad brick remains of the chimneys standing like sentinels to an era long gone, but thankfully for your poignant images, not forgotten. Why we feel the need to bulldoze away the past I will never know.
ReplyDeleteMy friends used to take care of the mansion . We were able to enjoy it's beauty , when it was pristine. Very sad
ReplyDeleteMy friends used to take care of the mansion . We were able to enjoy it's beauty , when it was pristine. Very sad
ReplyDeleteThank you for the photos here, great job!
ReplyDelete