Inisfada

Nicholas F. Brady and his wife, Genevieve Garvan Brady, built Inisfada at Manhasset, in what is now the Village of North Hills, between 1916 and 1920. The architect was John T. Windrim of Philadelphia, and Preservation Long Island describes the house as the only known example of his work in New York State. The Tudor Revival house had 87 rooms and a chapel and stood at 251 Searingtown Road. The Bradys were devout Catholics and had no children.

Nicholas Brady died in 1930. In 1937 Time magazine reported that after its contents were sold at auction, Inisfada and its 225 acres would become the property of the Society of Jesus, to serve as a house of studies for young Jesuits. The same article said that the papal secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, had visited the previous autumn; he became Pope Pius XII in 1939. The New York Province of the Society of Jesus held the property from 1937, and it later operated as the St. Ignatius Retreat House, where retreats and weddings took place.

In June 2012 the Jesuits announced that the retreat house would close, citing the cost of maintaining the building and changes in how retreats are made. The property, by then 33 acres, was placed on the market. Local residents, the Greater Manhasset Council of Civic Associations and preservationists sought landmark status, but they did not succeed. The sale went under contract in May 2013 and closed in August 2013 for a reported $36 million. The buyer was the Manhasset Bay Group, reported to be backed by developers based in Hong Kong. Before demolition the St. Genevieve chapel was taken apart in pieces and given to Fordham University, which stored it without immediate plans to rebuild it.

Demolition began on the morning of December 5, 2013. In 2014 the Village of North Hills planning board accepted a revised plan from the Manhasset Bay Group for 46 house lots on about 30.5 acres of the former retreat grounds, and The Island Now reported that the rest of the house had been demolished. This research did not confirm how much of that subdivision has been built.

The old goldcoastmansions.com site listed Inisfada as a standing retreat house. That is no longer true. Nothing of the main house remains on the site, which is private property, and there is nothing to visit. The chapel given to Fordham is the only significant part of the house known to have been saved.