Ebo Hill mansion in Smithtown destroyed by fire, police say

A Smithtown home dating to 1845 and once owned by generations of the town’s founding family burned to the studs Monday night, the former owner said.

Suffolk County police said they received a call at 7:56 p.m. Monday regarding a house fire on Edgewood Avenue in Smithtown.

Ebo Hill mansion at 227 Edgewood Ave. was to undergo a major renovation, which was to return it to “look like it did the day it was new,” then-prospective owner Richard Albano told Newsday earlier this month.

Albano, of Deer Park, bought the 11,094-square-foot home on 3.2 acres. When reached on his cellphone Monday night, Albano said he could not talk.

The home had previously belonged to Richard Longobardi, who said the fire had started in the mantle above the fireplace in the study and the mansion was completely destroyed.

He said the sale had gone through two weeks ago.

“I feel awful, absolutely terrible. But nobody got hurt, thank God. It is what it is,” Longobardi said, adding that the wood in the house was 250 years old.

SEE PHOTOSPlans in the works to rebuild once grand home

Newsday reported Longobardi and his wife had bought the home in 2001 for $650,000, records showed.

The mansion, which had fallen into decline, had 16 bedrooms, a towering portico and 48 acres of woodland.

The home’s owners include several generations of the Smiths, the town’s founding family: Ethelbert Smith, who worked in the China tea trade in the mid-19th century, and his son Richard Lawrence Smith, who was prominent in yachting and horse circles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and did brisk business in World War I shipping horses to Allied forces in Europe.

The blaze is under investigation, police said.

By Deborah S. Morris

deborah.morris@newsday.comdsvmorris

Deborah Morris is a native Long Islander and covers the town of Huntington.