Chelsea

Benjamin Moore was a New York attorney and, according to Nassau County, a great-great-grandson of Clement Clarke Moore, the author of A Visit from St. Nicholas. He married Alexandra Emery, whose family came from Cincinnati. The National Register nomination says the couple decided to build after a trip to Asia in 1920 to 1922; the county places their journey on the upper Yangtze River in 1921, on their honeymoon. Mrs. Moore later recalled a white house with a black roof, cattle in the courtyard, and water around one corner, and the couple resolved to reproduce it.

They bought the land in 1923 and chose William Adams Delano, of Delano & Aldrich, who lived nearby in Syosset. The nomination says Delano designed the house in 1923 and 1924 and that it was completed in 1925; the county gives 1924 as the building date. The house is roughly U-shaped and two and a half stories high, built of whitewashed concrete block with a steep roof, four irregular chimneys, and a large brick tower with a conical roof. A moat lined with Belgian block surrounds the southeast corner and is crossed by bridges, and a brick wall at the north end of the lawn was modeled on the wall of the Summer Palace in Peking. Delano added a service and children's wing in 1929. Inside, the dining room is paneled with woodwork from the Duke of Wellington's breakfast room at Stratfield Saye, and the long gallery carries a mural by Jose Maria Sert. Delano laid out the grounds with Mrs. Moore and the landscape architect Umberto Innocenti. The Moores made Chelsea their principal home and kept no house in New York City, and by the late 1920s the estate covered about 120 acres.

Benjamin Moore served as the first mayor of the Village of Muttontown from 1931 to 1938 and died in 1938. His widow married Robert Gordon McKay, an investment banker and longtime friend, in 1957 according to the nomination; the county says about 17 years after Moore's death. McKay died in 1958, and Mrs. McKay stayed on at Chelsea with her children. In 1964 she made her first gift of estate land to Nassau County, and over ten years she gave nearly 100 acres, which joined land from the Christie estate to form the 550-acre Muttontown Preserve. When the estate was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the house was still her private residence on 42 acres. She died there in 1983 at the age of 89.

Nassau County now owns the house, at 34 Muttontown Lane in East Norwich within the preserve. The county lists it among its preserves and museums and books it for private events through its caterer. No current public tour schedule was found.