Hampton Style - May 9, 2008 -

In its heyday, from 1865 to 1929, the North Shore represented America's largest concentration of wealth and power players. There once existed private maps of the area that indicated the owners and boundaries of these lavish estates; they proved useful to the local gentry for tracking down a new neighbor's home when the inevitable invitation arrived for tea, a polo match or a black-tie event. In the Jazz Age, dazzling North Shore parties were legendary, and many were recreated in fictional forms via Cole Porter or F. Scott Fitzgerald. But these stories hold the greatest resonance when they are told by family members who remain in the community long enough to write their own chapter. Our Special Section on the North features such a resident: Cornelia Guest, who, as the owner of Templeton, has roots that reach back to her great-grandfather John Phipps, owner of Old Westbury House (now a museum) and her grandfather Frederick Guest, and father Winston Guest, who both owned White Eagle (above). On the following pages she welcomes us into the storied estate that recalls the best of this gilded age. Alongside her contemporaries Kristina Davison and Anderson Cooper (also featured here), Cornelia represents a modern-day incarnation of the families who built the North Shore into the Hamptons' august neighbor to the west. Davison resides in the fifth-generation family compound, Peacock Point, where this summer she is hosting the annual Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory benefit. (Seawanaka-Corinthan Yacht Club, above, lies just to the east of Peacock Point.) Anderson Cooper counts members of his Vanderbilt family tree among the area's greatest proponents. William K. Vanderbilt (who owned The Alva, above) also established the Vanderbilt Motor Cup Races and, in the process, created the Long Island Motor Parkway (the first toll road). Anderson's mother Gloria grew up at Aunt Gertrude's home in Old Westbury but as an adult she chose to settle in Southampton, where Anderson spent his summers. Today, his own Hamptons home is in Quogue, the intentionally low-key town which is perhaps the farthest you can get from North Shore in terms of geography, and certainly in terms of bombast. Long Island is big enough to include both the North Shore and the Hamptons-and all of the people who make their homes there. We're excited to present our first annual look at the North Shore, because we've decided we're big enough to include both communities as well.