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Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths, by Monica Randall
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Monica Randall grew up on the Gold Coast of Long Island and was fascinated by the massive estates and their tantalizing stories. Millionaire F. W. Woolworth built Winfield, the grandest of its manors in the 1910s. On a clear day, you can see the New York City skyline from its balustraded roof, yet for nearly a century few have been allowed to enter its gates.
In the 1960s Monica was living in one of the fabled mansions built by a Five-and-Dime heiress. While there, she began a career scouting locations for movie; she used many of the surrounding estates including Winfield. After a brief incarnation as a charm school, Winfield was closed and auctioned off. At the auction, Monica met a mysterious European businessman, who bought the house. After a whirlwind romance, they became engaged, and Monica moved in to Winfield, only to have her suspicions confirmed: Winfield is haunted. Amid magnificent gilded carvings and marble, a labyrinth of secret passageways, hidden chambers, and deserted tunnels help reveal the true nature of its eccentric builder.
Through exhaustive research and countless interviews, Monica gradually uncovered stories of the Woolworths’ sad past: the suicide of Edna Woolworth (Barbara Hutton’s mother), Woolworth’s obsession with Napoleon and the Egyptian occult, and the rumors surrounding the unsolved fire which burnt the first Winfield to the ground. This riveting memoir explores the culture and history of an era gone by, filled with enthralling stories of infamous scandals and breathtaking Gilded Age tales of New York society. Captivating and impossible to put down, this book will enchant readers everywhere.
Throughout the last fifty years the Gold Coast mansions were regularly razed for subdevelopments; Winfield is the last of the marble palaces still standing.
- Sales Rank: #231024 in Books
- Published on: 2003-05-21
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.48" h x 1.05" w x 6.38" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
From Publishers Weekly
When Dominick Dunne praises a book, you can be sure about the subject: rich people and fabulous houses. But readers should be warned: this page-turner is also a weird ghost story. Randall, who spent her teen years raiding soon-to-be-destroyed mansions on Long Island's Gold Coast, rescuing everything from fixtures to furniture, later lived in Winfield, the mansion built by the fabulously wealthy and eccentric (he was obsessed with Napoleon) F.W. Woolworth. A former fashion model, photographer and author of another book about Gold Coast mansions, Randall moves from historical drama to melodrama when detailing how she came to call Winfield home. But she achieves an ideal balance between the bizarre and the compelling; even her romance with a mysterious, and occasionally obnoxious, foreigner seems plausible. Toward the end, after a visitor to Winfield develops stigmata, a rat appears possessed by a long-dead spirit, and a desperate search for an Egyptian tomb behind a wall in the mansion's basement threatens to turn deadly, readers will expect Randall to confess that she's made the whole thing up. But not only does she make no such confession, she's researched psychic phenomena in an effort to make sense of it all, providing a creepy example of how truth can be not only stranger, but sometimes more gripping, than fiction. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Randall's interest in the Gold Coast mansions of Long Island isn't just a passion; it has been a life's work. As a teenager, she and her two sisters found ways of breaking into the abandoned mansions and rescuing furniture, artifacts, and steamer trunks containing gowns before bulldozers and wrecking balls leveled the grand homes. For years Randall photographed the estates, but she also became a contact between production companies looking for opulent sites to shoot movies and advertisements and the remaining Gold Coast owners who needed financial help with their overwhelming maintenance costs and property taxes. Randall became attached to the beautiful Winfield, built by F. W. Woolworth, fell in love with one of its owners, Andre Von Brunner, and lived there for many months. The romance of the gilded era, rumors of haunted homes and the occult, and the excitement of a young woman fascinated by the beauty of Winfield and its eccentric owner fill Randall's account. Jane Eyre fans will love this memoir laced with romance and a gothic atmosphere. Michelle Kaske
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"No one knows the social history of the North Shore of Long Island, the aptly named Gold Coast, as well as Monica Randall does. Her book Winfield is a haunting and fascinating tale." --Dominick Dunne
"Spine-tingling... Randall sweeps her reader into a glorious dream world." --The Roanoke Times
"A genuinely spooky read." --Chicago Tribune
"Captivating.... Randall has crafted an eerie tale with echoes of Wuthering Heights or The House of Usher in Winfield.... A bizarre tale and indeed a haunting page-turner." --The Providence Journal
"Fascinating.... This is the perfect book for summer reading, and, like a nice assortment of European chocolates, it is tempting and virtually impossible to put down." --Tucson Citizen
"Engaging... The rational reader may be forgiven for occasionally wondering, Is any of this true? But it's a heck of a story, and so in a way, it doesn't really matter." --Dallas Morning News
"Jane Eyre fans will love this memoir laced with romance and gothic atmosphere." --Booklist
"Achieves an ideal balance between the bizarre and the compelling... Truth can be not only stranger, but sometimes more gripping, than fiction." --Publishers Weekly
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A Magical Mystery Tour of the Gold Coast
By Jonster
Ever since Gatsby glorified it, the Golden Age of Long Island's North Shore continues to fascinate.
Monica Randall's inspired quest to save as many relics of this fading era as she could had me rooting for her all the way. I gasped when I read about the bulldozer operator who took delight in destroying the alabaster fireplace after an unsuccessful bribe. By the time Monica moves to the scene of the 1955 Woodward murder, I was hooked. I have to disagree with some of Randall's "facts" related to that murder. For example, she says that Truman Capote got Ann Woodward to confess that she murdered her husband which I believe is untrue. That was the way Dominick Dunne wrote it in his novel. In actuality, there was a man named Bill Sudduth, now gone, who was part of the circle that Truman Capote and Dominick Dunne ran in. He worked for the cruise line and was put in charge of Ann Woodward in exile after the death of her husband. It was he who provided inside information to Capote and Dunne. I have never read that she confided anything about the "murder" to him over the years they knew each other.
Monica Randall is foolish-brave and not easily spooked. She is self-confident, a model who has worked for Pierre Balmain, the premiere designer in Paris at the time. And she has dreams of a life lived on the Gold Coast during the Gatsby Years or perhaps slightly before. She realizes she seems to have psychic abilities when she sees a "still" of her dream in a turn-of-the-century photograph in the newspaper archives.
From here the book becomes something else, more of an exploration of the spirit world and her own and others' psychic abilities.
A shadow of implausibility hangs over some scenes, however, especially at the end, and I wonder about some of the characters (and rodents) Randall fails to mention in the thoughtful afterword she provides. What happened to her fiance'? I also wondered why, without giving anything away, that a certain area wasn't more fully investigated by the subsequent owners and reported on in the book since it is such a crucial element.
Still, I found the book to be totally engrossing and well-written. I found Randall delightfully odd, especially when describing one of the antique dresses she wore to a party with a real Woolworth who lived in back of her in a large mansion. Her description of the disintegration of this dress had me laughing on the subway.
The entire book has a ghostly feel to it, even the photograph of the author posed in an antique gown with a feather fan. She is ethereal and otherworldly, slightly out of focus against a grand piano. And that's how this book reads -- a lovely tour through the remnants of a forgotten era.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Outstanding; a true page turner!
By Jesse Clifton
The author begins by pulling you into the horror she feels at watching the famed Gold Coast mansions be razed to make way for new development. I found myself drawn into the activities of the Gold Coast Rescue Club which used just about every trick in the book, so to speak, to rescue what artifacts they could from the crumbling and neglected mansions and related outbuildings. (You'll be amazed at what they manage to rescue from obscurity) This is a fascinating story, not just of Woolworth and his eccentricities or Winfield Manor, but of a life long love of the architectural monuments from an era that has long since come and gone. The story weaves from her adolescent years to living in a Woolworth heiress mansion to meeting and falling in love with the man who purchased Winfield in the late 70's and her subsequent move into the estate. Don't confuse this as an all encompassing narrative on Woolworth, his family or Winfield. Rather, it's a gripping story of one woman's love of an era and her involvement with one particular magnificent Gold Coast Mansion.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Written with a Passion
By Ken T.
Ms. Randall is very passionate in her interests of the former Gold Coast of Long Island. Her passion carries through clearly in this book of Woolworth's old estate in Glen Cove. Having visited the estate several times in the past I can say she's right on target in her descriptions. She ties the present to the past of Winfield together very well. As you read this you can almost picture yourself standing in the midst of the characters; its that descriptive. If you have never seen the old estate there are photographs as well to bring you there. While non-fiction, one can't help but feel some creative license has been taken in the writing. No matter, since the book is entertaining in the oddity of Winfield's present, as well as in it's less than stellar heyday due largely to it's eccentric owner, Frank W. Woolworth. Well worth your time
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