Old Westbury Gardens

John S. Phipps was a son of Henry Phipps, a partner of Andrew Carnegie in the Carnegie Steel Company. The younger Phipps became a director of the United States Steel Company, the Grace Steamship Lines, and the Guaranty Trust Company. In 1901 he bought 175 acres in Old Westbury from John D. Hicks Jr., and he added several neighboring farms in the following years. In 1903 he married Margarita Celia Grace, a daughter of Michael P. Grace of W. R. Grace and Company, who had grown up at Battle Abbey in East Sussex. According to the 2010 National Register documentation, Phipps promised his wife an English house and garden like the ones she had known as a girl.

The designer was George A. Crawley of London, who had already worked on interiors for Henry Phipps's New York townhouse. Crawley formed a partnership with the architects Alfred Bossom and Edward Hinkle, and the three prepared the plans. Westbury House went up in 1906 and 1907 on the highest ground of the property. It is a two-and-a-half-story brick house, nine bays long, with stone trim, a slate roof, and tall paired chimneys, and the 1976 nomination compares it to English country seats such as Coleshill. Horace Trumbauer added a servants' wing (the 1976 form dates the service wing to 1911; the 2010 form dates Trumbauer's wing to 1909) and enlarged the ballroom in 1919. Crawley widened the west porch in 1924, his last work there before his death in 1926. Crawley also planned the beech and linden allees, the Walled Garden, the Rose Garden, and the Ghost Walk, a copy of the yew walk at Battle Abbey.

The Phipps family used the house as their spring and autumn home from 1907 until John Phipps died in 1958. Their daughter, Margaret Phipps Boegner, known as Peggie, led the effort to keep the estate whole. The 2010 nomination records that she considered giving it to New York State but, after consulting Robert Moses, chose private stewardship. Old Westbury Gardens opened to the public in 1959 with Mrs. Boegner as founding chair, a post she held until 1986. Her own house, Orchard Hill, stood on a 35-acre parcel next door that her father had given her in 1929. The Gardens bought Orchard Hill after her death in 2006.

Today Old Westbury Gardens, a not-for-profit organization, owns and operates the house and grounds. The 2010 National Register boundary increase describes about 187 acres; the organization's own site gives 200. The house keeps the family's English furniture and paintings. Visitors enter at 71 Old Westbury Road. In the 2026 season the grounds open daily except Tuesday from April 1 to October 31, and a ticket bought in advance online includes Westbury House and the gardens.