Creating Legacies: Old Westbury Gardens and the World of the Phipps Family with Clive Aslet

Creating Legacies: This series explores enduring family businesses, influential art collections, and meaningful philanthropy through the perspectives of those who built them. Each speaker shares the decisions, discipline, and determination behind preserving something worth passing on.

Of the 900 country houses built on Long Island at the turn of the 20th century, only one survives as a complete ensemble of architecture, gardens, collection, and history. Old Westbury Gardens was built in 1906 for Jay Phipps and his English-born wife Margarita and designed by English tastemaker George Crawley to feel, unmistakably, like home for an English bride. Clive Aslet, Visiting Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University and former long-serving editor of Country Life, will tell the story of this remarkable survivor, drawing on a rich archive of photographs. He will also trace the wider world of the Phipps family, whose passion for polo drew them each winter to Palm Beach.