Poplar Hill

Frederic Bayley Pratt (1865 to 1945) was a son of Charles Pratt, the oil refiner who founded Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Frederic gave much of his life to the institute. He became secretary to its board of trustees in 1887, took over the daily management of the school after his father's death, and later served as both president and chairman of the board before retiring about 1937. Like his brothers, he built a country house on the family land at Dosoris in Glen Cove. His first house, which stood on what the Glen Cove Public Library calls the highest hill in the city, was built in 1898 to designs by the firm of Babb, Cook and Willard.

That house was replaced by the present one, designed by Charles A. Platt. The dates given for the new house vary. The Glen Cove Public Library says the replacement came in 1917, the Glengariff center's own history and the Old Long Island blog give 1917 to 1924, Wikipedia gives 1925, and a 2011 Newsday article calls it a 1912 mansion. The house stands atop Poplar Hill, close to George D. Pratt's Killenworth, and a 2010 Patch article describes it as a French Norman chateau-style building on a 35-acre hilltop with a view of Long Island Sound. A sales brochure, which the Old Long Island blog credits to the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (now Preservation Long Island), shows the house when it was offered for sale, probably in the 1940s.

Frederic Pratt died in 1945, and the estate later became the Glengariff nursing home. Wikipedia dates that conversion to 1947, but the newspaper it cites could not be read for this entry. Photographs published on the Old Long Island blog show the mansion standing empty in 1972, before it was returned to use by the nursing home. In 2011 the Long Island chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave an Archi award to John W. Baumgarten Architect for remodeling the mansion, which was by then a component of the Glengariff Healthcare Center, into a rehabilitation center.

Today the New York State Department of Health lists the facility as Glengariff Health Care Center at 141 Dosoris Lane, a 262-bed residential health care facility operated by Glengariff Operating LLC, a for-profit company. The center calls itself Glengariff Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center and offers short-term rehabilitation and long-term skilled nursing care. Descriptions of Poplar Hill as a senior residence are imprecise; it is a licensed nursing home and rehabilitation center.

The mansion is not open for public tours.