{"nrhp_refnum":"91000239","name":"Mackay Estate Water Tower","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Redwood Dr. between Lincoln Dr. and Lufberry Dr.","address_restricted":false,"city":"East Hills","county":"Nassau County","state":"NY","lat":40.79753995200008,"lon":-73.63924341399996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1991-03-14","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A stone-clad water tower on Redwood Drive in East Hills, Nassau County, New York, designed in 1899 by Stanford White and built in 1900-02 as part of Clarence Mackay's Harbor Hill estate. A metal tank by Tippett & Wood sits inside a round stone shell with a slate roof and copper cupola.","why_significant":"The tower is significant as a representative example of an early-twentieth-century estate dependency and as a fine example of Stanford White's country estate architecture. It is a rare survivor of a once-common building type from the era of Long Island's great estates. It also shows how the Mackay estate functioned and how its design program treated utilitarian structures as picturesque landscape features.","narrative":"On a small rise beside Redwood Drive in East Hills, a round stone tower with a bell-shaped slate roof and copper cupola hides a working water tank. It was designed in 1899 by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White and built in 1900-02 for Clarence Mackay's Harbor Hill estate, which eventually covered more than six hundred acres. The utilitarian metal tank, made by Tippett & Wood of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, stands on eight legs inside a shell of random ashlar stone with a few small openings and a Guastavino-tile dome. White chose a rustic design that would blend with the grounds and serve as a garden pavilion, an idea drawn from English landscape gardens. The mansion was demolished in 1954 and the land subdivided, yet the tower survives as one of three outbuildings from the estate. It still supplies water to the neighborhood built on the former grounds. It is listed as a rare surviving estate dependency and an example of White's work.","period_of_significance":"1900-1902","architect_builder":"Stanford White (McKim, Mead & White)","architectural_style":"Picturesque","criteria":["C"],"status_note":"Still in use as a water tower, supplying water to the surrounding residential neighborhood; the form says it retains a very high degree of integrity.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:45.364497-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/91000239.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/91000239/103f20b6bd-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/91000239/103f20b6bd-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Daniel Winter","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mackay_Estate_Water_Tower_2013-09-29_16-24-46.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Daniel Winter</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mackay_Estate_Water_Tower_2013-09-29_16-24-46.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319145","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackay_Estate_Water_Tower","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6724285"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/nassau-county/mackay-estate-water-tower-91000239/"}