Montauk Manor

Carl G. Fisher, the developer of Miami Beach, bought the entire Montauk peninsula, more than 10,000 acres, for $2.5 million in 1925. He planned a summer resort with a beach club, a yacht club, polo fields, a golf course, glass-enclosed tennis courts, a ranch, a health spa and a boardwalk more than half a mile long. Its centerpiece was a hotel on Signal Hill. The firm Schultze & Weaver, which also designed The Breakers in Palm Beach and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, designed it in an English Tudor style. The National Register record gives 1926 as the year of significance, and the hotel opened in the spring of 1927; the hotel historian Stanley Turkel dates the opening to June 1, 1927.

The Manor was planned as the first of four hotels, but Fisher's timing was poor. The stock market crash of 1929 eroded his fortune, his business empire collapsed into bankruptcy in 1932, and he declared personal bankruptcy in 1935. A promotional booklet issued in 1929 by his Montauk Beach Development Corporation advertised 200 guest rooms; other accounts give 178. After Fisher's collapse the hotel continued to operate with modest success, mainly in summer. In 1938 it sheltered residents of Montauk's fishing village who lost their homes in the Great New England Hurricane, and during World War II it served as headquarters and barracks for the Montauk Naval Torpedo Testing Range.

The hotel declined after the war. The Montauk Library says it closed in 1964, while a 2025 Dan's Papers history gives 1967, and the building then stood derelict for nearly 20 years. With support from Montauk residents, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. In 1985 a group of developers headed by Frank Mascioli bought the property for a reported $2 million and spent about another $2 million to rebuild it as condominiums.

Today the Manor contains 140 condominium apartments, from studios to three-bedroom units with full kitchens, along with an outdoor pool, an indoor pool, a health club and tennis courts. It operates as a condominium resort hotel, and rooms can be booked by the public, so visitors can see the building by staying there or by dining at its restaurant.

Montauk Manor is not a Gold Coast country house. It is a resort hotel at the eastern end of Long Island's South Fork, built by a developer rather than as a private estate. It is included here because the old goldcoastmansions.com site featured it.