The glamour of Gatsby is still alive and well on Long Island – here's how to find it

Telegraph

12-04-2025

Most people would agree that 100 years is a long time. Our world has changed immeasurably in the last century, and the planet is very different now to what it was in 1925.
And yet, even over the course of a century, some things do not change at all.
This week marks the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald's fabulous tale of a nouveau-riche dreamer who throws opulent parties in the giddy atmosphere of a New York summer, attracting the cream of Big Apple society to his grand Long Island mansion – all the while hoping that the guest-list will include the lost love who now lives across the bay with an odious husband.
Yet while the story is set in the hot months of 1922, its various interwoven themes – wealth inequality; overweening ambition; the insulating effects of money; the public's love of a scandal, and its delight in the downfall of those who trip up in open view – are just as relevant now as they were (way) back then.
So much so that I have been able to recast Fitzgerald's masterpiece for a modern audience.
This week also marks the publication of Gatsby, my reimagining of the jazz age's greatest novel for the social-media era. My version takes the original, extravagant, tragic narrative as its basis, but this time finds the female voices within it by gender-flipping the players (Fitzgerald himself was aware of his novel's shortcomings in this respect, writing to his publisher Max Perkins that his book lacked 'any important women characters').
So instead of the Midwestern bootlegger still fixated on his former sweetheart Daisy, my Gatsby is a willowy wellness influencer in love with the feckless Danny Buchanan – who is himself married to mean girl Tomasina (T).
And the narrator Nick Carraway is now wannabe writer Nic, trying to make her name in celebrity journalism while dabbling in romance with golfing lothario Jordan Baker – amid the turbulent politics and Instagram exposure of the present day. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This final sentiment also applies to New York – both the celebrated city, and the wider state in which Long Island spreads out so seductively – in which Fitzgerald placed his characters.
In reshaping The Great Gatsby for the latest 'Twenties', I was able to draw on the very same sites and locations which gave power to his pen. They are not hard to find, because while the fashions, the cars, the music and the cocktails may have morphed, 'West Egg' and 'East Egg' are still there, and still glamorous.
Moreover, those seeking to trace the novel for themselves can do so with great ease.
The obvious place to begin is not on Long Island, but at the south-east corner of Central Park.
Before they moved to Long Island in 1922, Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda enjoyed wild nights in Manhattan, inhabiting a suite at the fashionable Plaza Hotel. They were so much at home there that the author dropped it directly into the pages of his book, using it as the setting for the bourbon-soaked argument between Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan which triggers the final chapters.
Fitzgerald's own evenings there were no more sober; (in)famously, Zelda swam in the Pulitzer Fountain, just outside the hotel, during one of the couple's many boozy escapades.
The fountain looks less enticing for a dip these days, buzzed as it is by Uber bikers and customers spilling from the adjacent Apple store, but The Plaza maintains its prohibition ambience under the blue-glazed roof of the Palm Court.
With a glittering circular bar serving tipples such as the deliciously tart Cherrywood cocktail – as jazz is piped over the palm fronds – it is easy to imagine the novel's in-suite tiff taking place in one of the rooms directly above you.
However, Fitzgerald did not write any of The Great Gatsby in this riotous context.
When the Big Apple drained their finances, the couple moved with their baby daughter (Frances, known as 'Scottie') to Long Island – for what Fitzgerald described in his ledger as 'a comfortable but dangerous and deteriorating year at Great Neck'.
The house they rented at 6 Gateway Drive was a humble affair – possibly the inspiration for Carraway's cottage, sandwiched between palaces, in the novel. But it was here that Fitzgerald wrote the first three chapters – scribbling away in a room above the garage (at least, he did when not sozzled at 'wild parties' with 'Gloria Swanson and the movie crowd', fellow writer Ring Lardner, or gossip columnist Dorothy Parker).
Miraculously – on an island where homes are torn down and rebuilt with regular abandon – the property is still there, though much less humble than it was. The Mediterranean-style house is now larger, and nestles in a smart commuter neighbourhood. It is privately owned, and inaccessible – but you can peek up at the rounded window of Fitzgerald's former study from the pristine sidewalk.
If you have made it to Great Neck then you have already followed in the tyre tracks of Fitzgerald and Zelda – and Gatsby and the Buchanans – into the heart of the action. Just 10 miles further north, at the top edge of Long Island, Sands Point is the place where the Jazz Age never really ended.
Gatsby's house, a character just as compelling as any of Fitzgerald's various schemers, may have been a composite of any number of the grand residences dotted along this coveted stretch of coast. Sadly, Beacon Towers – perhaps the prime piece of inspiration, all Disney turrets and architectural excess – was demolished in 1945; only the garage and gates now remain. But both Hempstead House and Falaise – now protected on the Sands Point Preserve – still give a good approximation (sandspointpreserveconservancy.org).
Originally built by financier Howard Gould, the 40-room Hempstead House was the summer home of social butterflies Daniel and Florence Guggenheim – and the setting for many shindigs between 1917 and 1942.
Their son Harry built Falaise in the 216-acre grounds – a French-Norman-style manor house with a swimming pool in the rose garden. Falaise is only open in summer, but Hempstead welcomes the public throughout the year. To me, it feels like pure Gatsby – perched on its cliff overlooking Long Island Sound, peering towards the shimmering shore beyond.
Visiting the property to research my novel was a transportative experience: walking through the Tudor-esque front door, and passing under the 60ft vaulted ceiling foyer to the walnut-panelled library and the sunken palm court – before arriving at the billiard room overlooking the balustraded lawn. Standing there, I could conjure the parties and the lights, streaming from the windows like a magic lantern.
The Hempstead of 2025 makes much of its living by hosting weddings. So too does Oheka Castle (oheka.com), 20 miles east in Huntington – though with a greater emphasis on celebrities and the gleam of Instagram.
This pale, hulking château, with ostentatious formal gardens – the second largest private home ever built in the US – is now a hotel and restaurant (while also offering golfing challenges for aspiring Jordan Bakers at the Cold Springs Country Club).
Gatsby Hour is held in the bar every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and you can also take tours of a property where Taylor Swift's Blank Space music video was filmed in 2014. The owner, Gary Melius (who had his own Gatsby incident in the same year, when he was shot in the grounds by an unknown attacker) greets guests personally over dinner.
There are other echoes too. The 230-acre Old Westbury Gardens (oldwestburygardens.org), and the 1906-built Westbury House within it, is one of the best preserved of the one-percenter estates on Long Island; Baz Luhrmann took his lead from it in the design for the Buchanans' home in his 2013 cinematic interpretation of the novel, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
It is certainly on-brand: it is the correct colour scheme as described by Fitzgerald, and the owners had polo ponies on the grounds. Crammed with antiques, surrounded by manicured gardens, and boasting a west porch that Daisy Buchannan would surely consider 'darling', it has been featured in numerous films including North By Northwest, Love Story and The Age Of Innocence.
You can also go further out in search of the chic Long Island. The rustic elegance of the collective Hamptons (Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton), 75 miles east of Great Neck, is a magnet for sandy feet with checking accounts and social-media followers in the millions
Hotspots include restaurants such as Nick & Toni's in East Hampton, The Surf Lodge in Montauk and Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton. There are also chi-chi hamlets such as Amagansett (where Gwyneth Paltrow has a house), Water Mill (where Jennifer Lopez resides) and Sag Harbor.
Ultimately, however, it all comes down to the view. Gatsby is written as a keen sailor, and boating is a huge part of both Fitzgerald's and my novels – so lingering on a jetty while looking seaward was a necessary part of preparing to write.
Fathoms Hotel in Port Washington is only 18 miles from Manhattan, but it offers a panorama which encapsulates the magic of The Great Gatsby. The former Knickerbocker Yacht Club, it sits on a spot so splendid that, from its rear deck, you can see both the mansions on Kings Point (the 'West Egg' of Fitzgerald's narrative, home to Gatsby) and their counterparts on Sands Point (Fitzgerald's 'East Egg'; where the Buchanans live).
Check into one of its six sumptuous rooms for a few days, and you should have time to set sail on one of the ' Great Gatsby Boat Tours ' which depart from an adjacent quay – bobbing along the coast to peek at those monied properties.
Alternatively, you can sit with a sundowner in hand, staring out along the hotel's own long dock, manifesting your own dreams onto those distant turrets out there across the water. Of course the dock has a green light…
Gatsby by Jane Crowther (Borough Press, £16.99) is out now
Essentials
Airlines including British Airways (ba.com), Virgin Atlantic (virginatlantic.com) and American Airlines (aa.com) fly to New York from various British airports.
The Plaza (001 212 759 3000; fairmont.com) in Manhattan has double rooms from $973 (£760). Fathoms Hotel & Marina in Port Washington (001 516 883 4800; fathomshotel.com) has rooms from $359 (£280).