A new beginning for Lands End

The chimneys are pretty much all that remain.

Two claw-hooked excavators Monday tore at Lands End, a Gold Coast country home some believe was part inspiration for Daisy Buchanan's house in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

Demolition began Saturday morning and continued Monday. And then a custom-home subdivision will rise.

"It's sad to see," said Bert E. Brodsky, the developer who owns the property. "Another time and place, it was great. But time marches on. You have to adjust to the date."

The 24,000-square-foot Colonial Revival in Sands Point once hosted celebrities, British royalty and Winston Churchill.

Brodsky bought it in 2004. Its upkeep was as much as $4,500 per day. It went on the market, but no buyers materialized. He decided to demolish it.

"To me, it's something to mourn," said historian and author Monica Randall, who studies Gold Coast homes.

Monday, frayed peach-colored curtains billowed out a broken window, a Doric column tilted and parts of the house swayed in the wind.

The excavator began. One by one, columns were pulled from their roots. The giant claw reached up, grabbed an overhang and pulled. In a cloud of brick, dust and wood, the third-floor servants' quarters came crashing down. A raccoon scurried along the roof.

Brodsky watched. "I wonder what Gatsby would be thinking if he were standing here."

No one knows whether Lands End inspired Fitzgerald. Randall said he attended parties there. Brodsky calls it lore.

"Fitzgerald took some inspiration from things on Long Island," said Natalie A. Naylor, president of the Nassau County Historical Society. "The houses and things are all amalgams of things. It's a novel."

As many as 1,400 opulent estates once filled the Gold Coast with Tiffany windows, underground bowling alleys and luxurious accommodations. When taxes and maintenance costs soared, hundreds were demolished. "These beautiful things keep going down and down until there's nothing left," Randall said.

Lands End is bound for a new destiny -- the Seagate at Sands Point, five homes with prices starting at $10 million.

One will be named Lands End.