While many of the lavish, 20th century estates that once dotted Long Island’s North Shore – earning the area the nickname “Gold Coast” – have vanished and others remodeled and reconfigured – Oyster Bay’s Planting Fields is one of only a few surviving estates on Long Island with both its land and buildings intact.
A lawyer named James Byrne first built a country retreat on the property in 1908. William Robertson Coe, an English insurance executive and entrepreneur, purchased the property from Byrne in 1913. After the Byrne house was destroyed by fire, Coe had an English-Tudor-style mansion built on the site. Coe had a keen interest in horticulture and had trees and plants imported from around the world. He hired a firm run by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to reshape the property. Their shared vision brought to life an estate that includes 409 acres of rolling lawns, formal gardens, and woodland paths. New gardens and structures were added to the property into the 1930s.
Coe deeded his estate to New York State in the early 1950s with the provision that it be maintained for educational purposes. In 1955 it became the State University Center on Long Island at Oyster Bay, a temporary home for what is now SUNY Stony Brook while that school was under construction.
Now open to the public, the Planting Fields Arboretum welcomes over 200,000 visitors every year. Passes to the Planting Fields are now available from the library, free with your library card. Call the library or check out the library’s website for details: https://goldcoastlibrary.org/museum-passes/