Lattingtown

Once a Simple Marsh, Now a Posh Preserve

Beginnings: Known now for its stately estates and aura of manicured grandeur, Lattingtown was at first just a marsh, largely ignored by Matinecock Indians who chose to live in more accommodating spots nearby. Even though fish spawned in the tidal marsh, the Matinecocks apparently drove no hard bargain when they sold much of the area to Richard Latting and his son, Josiah, in 1660. For a while, Josiah Latting had a successful business selling the reeds from the marsh for thatched-roof houses. (His 20-acre site is now a wildlife preserve owned by Nassau County, though there is no public access to it.) For two and a half centuries, a small collection of farmers settled in the area, but with no train station or main road, the tiny community remained isolated and quiet.

Turning Point: Those very qualities led to the end of the farms. After the beginning of this century, wealthy industrialists transformed the farms into estates. In the early years of this period, much of Lattingtown was owned by two attorneys, Paul Craveth and William Guthrie, the village's first mayor after it incorporated in 1931. Guthrie's main client was the banker J.P. Morgan, who had an estate next door in Glen Cove. Guthrie's 300-acre estate, Meaudon, required so much of its staff to live on the grounds that a school bus stopped there just for children of the staff. Guthrie and Craveth sealed the village's high-brow image in the 1930s when they bought out and razed the small commercial district to ensure that Lattingtown was strictly residential.

Denial Amid Indulgence: In Lattingtown, one of the wealthiest communities in the country (with a median family income of $134,000), there is a 118-acre estate whose residents have taken vows of poverty. It is St. Josephat's Monastery, and the Basilian monks who have lived there since 1944 use the 74-room mansion as a place of quiet prayer. The mansion had been owned by industrialist J.E. Aldred until he went bankrupt in 1942. A bank seized it and found no buyers until the order snapped it up for $75,000, a bargain even then.

Where to Find More: In the Lattingtown file of the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University, Hempstead.