Welwyn was the 240 acre estate built in 1906 for Harold Irving Pratt, an oil industrialist and philanthropist. Pratt and his wife Harriet lived in their lavish home until his death in 1939 and hers in ‘69, upon which occasion the house was willed to Nassau County. The County did not build on this estate or restore it and it was left to rot.
Only the greenhouses on the property served a small
purpose: In the 1990s the Nassau County Sheriff’s Department used the large basements
beneath the greenhouses as a training center for its staff. A makeshift
jail was built, complete with a steel-barred cell.
In 1993, Boris Chartan, a Holocaust survivor,
announced plans to restore the nearly 100 year old mansion and use it to house
Long Island’s first Holocaust museum, which remains open to this day inside the
estate’s main house.
As a part of the restoration of the mansion, the
museum decided to restore the adjacent garden to its original beauty. The
garden, designed by the famous Olmsted brothers, were commissioned by
Harriet Pratt. Along with the verdant gardens, she designed multiple elaborate
greenhouses.
Unfortunately, the cost of restoring and
maintaining the once-magnificent glass buildings proved too expensive, so they
have been left to the elements. The greenhouses today are the most derelict
part of the property. They can be found behind the mansion, carriage houses,
and tennis courts down a very narrow cobblestone path.
The entire estate is open for exploration. Follow the
cobblestone paths through the woods, to small bridges that lead over streams,
all the way down to what was once the Pratts’ private beach. Welwyn
Preserve is operated as a public preserve. The preserve includes a butterfly
garden, extensive mature woodland, salt marsh and a tidal inlet
Source:
“Welwyn Preserve.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas
Obscura, 24 Mar. 2017, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/welwyn-preserve
“Welwyn
Preserve.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Jan. 2021,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welwyn_Preserve
