MARKETING: Reintroducing LI's Gold Coast

Long Island's Gold Coast past - a time of grand mansions, grander parties and parents and grandparents who owned railroads and oil companies - is virtually unknown to a younger generation, said Nancy Melius-Murton, director of marketing for Oheka Castle, the former OttoKahn mansion, in Cold Spring Hills.

Melius-Murton has decided to help some remember, and attract more tourists, as well as filmmakers, to Long Island.

Melius-Murton, daughter of Oheka owner Gary Melius and a former Broadway dancer, has been working for the last six months to bring together representatives of Long Island's Gold Coast mansions to create "a collective marketing campaign."

She lived in England for three years and saw how the English popularize and publicize their mansions, Melius-Murton said.

"It's very unfortunate," Melius-Murton said. "Once we had thousands of mansions. We had the most in America in one area. Now there's only a handful left." And she said people are either unaware of them or don't know how to get to them, or don't know what is in them.

The website Melius-Murton has created, historiclongisland .com, is aimed at curing that.

"I'm meeting people" in New York City and elsewhere "and they don't know about the Gold Coast of Long Island," Melius-Murton said. "They don't know the Great Gatsby. We're just letting it all disappear."

The website describes seven Gold Coast mansions, and Melius-Murton said she plans to add more.

Beginning this year, Nassau and Suffolk counties will celebrate May as Long Island History Month. The signing of the proclamations by the two counties' clerks will take place May 20, from 3-7 p.m. at Oheka Castle. Formal invites are to be sent via e-mail.