The Gatsby House Goes Down, And Three Allegories Rise

Lands End, the Long Island mansion that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” met a wrecking ball this weekend. This architectural legend’s demise, while a curiosity for literary buffs, provides a few anthropological allegories about America.

1. “The American Dream’s Dissolution:” Though “The Great Gatsby” concerns Jay and Daisy’s love, it is, as English class taught us, about the pitfalls of the American Dream, that amorphous national myth that every man, woman and child can achieve success if they work hard.

Since the recession began, pundits and politicos have warned that the seemingly eternal Dream may become a thing of the past. To the pessimistic of our ranks, the destruction of the mansion that inspired Daisy’s fictional home can only mean one thing: the American Dream remains just a memory.

Since dreams are intangible, though, they can’t really disappear; they only take new shape. For example, this storied land will soon be home to five smaller structures. Hey, Dreams may not die, but they can be sliced and diced and sold for profit! That’s the American way.

[The House, in happier times.]

2. “The End of Excess:” Before the ’80s or even the ’60s, there were the ’20s, an era embossed in gold, pearl and every type of booze you could imagine. That was the backdrop for young Fitzgerald’s world, and one he saw across the bay, at Lands End, every night.

“Just picture the moon out, the band playing, all the people dancing and mingling,” said the property’s current owner, Burt Brodsky, who bought the mansion seven years ago for $18 million but couldn’t keep up with the dilapidated space’s renovations.

“It’s almost like not real. It’s almost like a fantasy land. Like you read about it and say, ‘No, nobody could really live like this.’”

With austerity now a household term, and citizens of all stripes becoming more thrifty, some may predict that the excess that inspired “Gatsby” has also faded forever. Before you fret over the end of roaring parties, though, let’s not forget that the ’20s — and the ’80s and ’60s — were a reaction to doom and gloom that had preceded them.

With the world in such disarray, I’d say we’re all in for one hell of a fiesta.

3. “Final Nail for Newspapers:” The sprawling mansion may be most closely associated with Fitzgerald and Gatsby, but the 25-room structure, set on 8-acres and nestled next to the ocean, was actually built in 1902 by Herbert Bayard Swope, a newspaper man who partied with the likes of Winston Churchill, Dorothy Parker and Albert Einstein.

Those parties were the ones that Fitzgerald so admired and later recreated for Jay, Daisy, Nick and the rest.

With newspapers almost completely eclipsed by the Internet and iPad, the end of Lands End, once a symbol of a titanic industry in which star reporters and editors lived like kings, illustrates the demise of publishing world meeting the same fate as Fitzgerald’s doomed characters.

As with the “deaths” of excess and the American Dream, though, this projection too has a silver lining: the Internet, like newspapers, produces rich gobs who party down in massive mansions, just like Swope.

Whether or not that’s a good thing — well, we’ll have to see what kind of books our modern madness produces.