Columnist Karen Rubin: GN Historical Society honors home

The Island Now

After a long period of preparation and anticipation, the Great Neck Historical Society in June bestowed its first plaque recognizing the significance of a residence (the first plaque presented by the historical society went to a public building, Great Neck House).

This singular honor went to a magnificent and distinctive home, that interestingly, had intrigued the current owner as a child growing up in Great Neck (I know it has always been one of my favorites, too). She never imagined as a girl that she would someday be its caretaker. 

Anyone who has traveled down West Shore Road at Cove Lane is sure to have been struck by the charming white house with its distinctive tower. This structure was once the carriage house, stables, hayloft and water tower for “The Cove” estate.

In much the same way as exploring one’s genealogy yields fascinating stories and characters (did you hear that President Obama’s mother, Ann Durham, may have been a descendent of one of the first documented African slaves in America, John Punch?) homes harbor the stories of their inhabitants and their community. They take on a life of their own. 

Homes in Great Neck nurtured and gave inspiration to the likes of George M Cohan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ring Lardner, Oscar Hammerstein II, Groucho Marx, Madeleine Albright, W.C. Fields. We have homes of notable architects and designers including Frank Lloyd Wright; McKim, Mead and Stanford White and Gustav Stickley.

The Great Neck Historical Society does not just willy-nilly present these plaques. The owner has to make application and explain why the home is significant – historically, architecturally or for some other reason, such as being connected to some important person. And then the Heritage Recognition Program committee does its own research. In the this , the committee chair, Joan Wheeler, and Leila Mattson, who only recently retired as the Great Neck Library reference librarian, did extensive research, caught up in the intrigue.

What they found is fodder for a novel or movie, involving  the CIA, JFK and…… murder.

As Joan Wheeler recounted (noting that it was hard to follow the history since all the early owners were named Cord Meyer – a Cord Meyer Sr., a Cord Meyer Jr. and a Cord Meyer II who is not the third but the first – but sometimes these suffixes were left off): 

The home at One Cove Lane is the former carriage house, stables, hayloft and water tower built c. 1879 on the property of “The Cove,” an 11-acre estate on West Shore Road owned by Cord Meyer II (1854–1910) and his wife, Cornelia Meyer (1856–1939). “The Cove” was their main residence, built on the shorefront of what is now Cove Lane. 

Cord Meyer II was the son of a German immigrant, Cord Meyer, of Dick & Meyer, an old firm that refined sugar in Cuba. On his father’s death, c.1891, Cord Meyer II inherited a portion of his father’s $7 million fortune. He became a wealthy financier, industrialist and developer of large tracts of land, including the areas now known as Elmhurst and Forest Hills. He was active in politics, serving as chairman of the New York State Democratic Party. His friends included President Grover Cleveland. 

Cord Meyer II’s son, Cord Meyer Sr. (1895–1964), was a senior diplomat and real estate developer. He is listed as one of the original Early Birds of Aviation, a group of pioneer pilots who flew solo before 1917. 

His grandson, Cord Meyer Jr. (1920–2001) fought in the assault on Guam with the U.S. Marine Corps, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. His dispatches from the war were published in The Atlantic Monthly, and one of his short stories won the O. Henry Prize in 1946 for best first-published story. He was a founding member of the United World Federalists, where he fought for controls on the use of atomic weapons. He served 26 years at the Central Intelligence Agency where he was in charge of the covert operations branch.

“The Cove” main house was demolished in 1950, and the property became Cove Lane. On June 6, 1969, the original carriage house that remained, at One Cove Lane, was sold to William Nielson for $52,000. Two years later, on March 22, 1962, Nielson sold the house for $53,500 to Leonard Goodman of Goody Products Inc., a leading manufacturer of hair products. The company was founded by Leonard’s grandfather, Henry Goodman, who emigrated to the U.S. from the Ukraine shortly before 1907. Title of the house was transferred in June 1981, and then again in August 2009.

“That’s fairly interesting…but there’s more,” Wheeler said. “We never expected that an investigation into the history of the home would reveal a murder.” 

This is what they turned up. 

Cord Meyer Jr. — the one who was in the CIA —married Mary Eno Pinchot, a socialite and painter, in 1945. She and Cord Jr. moved to Washington, D.C. when he worked for the CIA, and were divorced in 1958. According to a book written about her, “A Very Private Woman,” one of her friends said that, after the divorce, Mary became “a well-bred ingenue out looking for fun and getting in trouble along the way. Mary was bad.”   

Mary went to Vasser College, and during a dance at Choate she met John F. Kennedy. She also knew Jackie Kennedy when they were neighbors, near Hickory Hill. Years later, in October 1961 when Mary was living in D.C., she visited John F. Kennedy at the White House – and their relationship became intimate. Mary reportedly had “about 30 trysts” with Kennedy, and it was said that she had an influence on Kennedy’s policies. 

After JFK’s assassination, she told Timothy Leary that she feared for her life. And she told a friend that she was keeping a diary…and asked the friend to safeguard it if anything should happen to her. Mary reported several times that she thought someone had been in her house….

In October of 1964, 11 months after the assassination and two weeks after the publication of the Warren Commission report, Mary was murdered along the tow path in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. An arrest was made, but the alleged killer was acquitted of all charges, and the murder remains unsolved—though there has been speculation that the CIA was involved. 

“There’s a lot more to the story, including the fact that Mary’s sister, Antoinette, was married to Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post. And the whereabouts of Mary’s diary: Was it stolen? Was it burned?? Go look on the Internet. There’s much, much more,” Wheeler said.

“The point is, you never know where you’ll end up when you research a house, and what you’ll find along the path!” 

Moving forward…the Great Neck Historical Society has approved applications from several other homes: 49 Cedar Drive in Great Neck Estates, which was designed by Gustav Stickley; 200 Grist Mill Lane, located on the former Udall and Eldridge estate. There’s a smokehouse on the property, and a cell in the cellar.

Two homes on Arleigh Drive, number 64, the former summer home of Fiorello LaGuardia, who did his radio broadcasts from the front porch; and 85, the summer home of famous Irish tenor John Charles Thomas. The house was also occupied at one time by Anita Loos, writer of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

In Kings Point there are two homes approved for recognition, in addition to One Cove Lane: 50 Pond Road, the lovely former home with extensive shoreline, built for E.M. Scott, one of the world’s most successful manufacturers, and later bought by August Heckscher, the esteemed financier and philanthropist; and 16 Sunset Road, a home with renovations by McKim, Mead and Stanford White.

Further south on the Great Neck Peninsula are: 48 Susquehanna, one of the oldest homes in Thomaston, with piggyback porches and a kitchen fireplace, built c. 1869; 9 Round Hill Road in Lake Success, known as the Samuel Willets house, which started off c. 1750 as a small dwelling, and grew during the next two and a half centuries. This was the farm that “Old Farm Road” was named for.

And 325 Old Lakeville Road, known as the Wooley’s house, built c. 1813. It may be that the property was a land grant before the formation of the United States.

But we’ve also lost some important structures.

I am still mourning the loss of Oscar Hammerstein’s house in Kennilworth on Kings Point), and worry about the fate of the Brickman Estate (some believe was the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzberald’s Great Gatsby, and worry about the fate of 325 East Shore Road, the house built by Joseph S. Spinney, probably in 1873, and occupied by Ring Lardner and his family in the 1920’s. I would personally like to commend Mike Nassimi for investing enormous time (and money) to restore two barns and the original schoolhouse/firehouse (believed to be the oldets on the Peninsula), at his home on East Shore Road. 

Indeed, the point of the Great Neck Historical Society’s recognition program is to give people an incentive to look, to appreciate, and hopefully, to preserve, rather than tear down without a thought.

There is always that push-pull between preservation and progress. Surely, old things decay; new structures can take better advantage of sustainable building materials and utilities.

But we can still find a balance.

Our community – every community – is undergoing constant change – the ebb and flow of people. That is because our community is a living organism, made up of people just as surely as each of us is made up of cells.

Those who are newcomers may come from cultures that make our centuries a mere blink of an eye in comparison to the millennia of their native heritage. They do not necessarily have the same sense of community, of being part of something greater beyond one’s own door.

 This program (which it should be noted is not the same as landmarking, which restricts the homeowner) is intended to raise awareness, appreciation, and hopefully, inculcate a culture that respects the heritage of our community, so that perhaps one day those who follow will in fact have something of significance, something that connects them to those who came before.

The Historical Society is looking to award additional plaques, primarily to homes constructed before 1925. But that is not a hard and fast date. the Society is also interested in recognizing newer home with famous residents. 

When you apply for a Heritage Recognition Plaque, you need to include documentation that supports whatever information you are providing – the year it was built, someone famous who lived there, etc. The Great Neck Historical Society (likely Joan Wheeler and Leila Mattson) will try to give you some assistance, including pointers on how to go about the research. 

Keep your eye out for homes, stores, and other buildings that you think may qualify, and send those addresses to the Great Neck Historical society us. If you know the homeowner’s name, include it, and, if possible, their phone number or email address. 

You’ll find information about the Great Neck Historical Society, how to join, about programs and events, and about the Heritage Recognition plaque program at www.greatneckhistorical.org

Help Save Great Neck’s past…for Great Neck’s future!

Share this Article