Oyster Bay Cove house uses old police booth as shed

This five-bedroom, four-bath house in Oyster Bay Cove, on the market for $2.5 million, was the home of the late Jack and Betty Livingston, philanthropists who gave generously to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Heckscher Museum of Art, the Art League of Long Island, Planting Fields Arboretum and elsewhere. "They were very important to the community," says Margaret Hargraves of Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty, who is listing the property with Peggy Moriarity.

When Jack Livingston heard that the old Lloyd Harbor police booth was going to be torn down, "he got it and brought it home and put it next to his house," says Hargraves, adding that he turned it into a garden shed.

The house was built in 1920 by Sir Ashley Sparks for a daughter and her friends to go fox hunting, says Hargraves. Sparks, who died in 1964, was the chief U.S. representative of the Cunard Steam-Ship Company, Ltd. He lived at the nearby 275-acre Northaw estate, of which he and wife, Mina, donated three acres to the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island.

This home is located on five acres.

Two adjoining properties owned by the Livingston estate also are for sale, for a total of 11 acres on the market: a five-bedroom, four-bathroom Colonial for $1.6 million that the couple had built for a mother who never moved in, and a three-bedroom, two-bath cottage for $1.1 million that once housed the gardener.

Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty photo