HOUSING: Transition

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In Woodbury, L. I. did the late Otto Hermann Kahn a stately pleasure dome decree. Architects Delano & Aldrich built it for him 22 years ago—a towering, turreted, 100-room French chateau surrounded with gardens, stables, farm buildings, 18-hole golf course, tennis courts, landing field and woodlands on 441 rolling acres. It was conservatively assessed at $1,100,000 and in it Otto Kahn, international banker (Kuhn, Loeb & Co.), art and opera patron, lived and entertained lavishly.

Otto Kahn died in 1934. His wife & children, though affluent, found the carrying charges of his pleasure dome too much for them. But they could find no latter-day tycoon rich enough to take it over. Last week the Kahn heirs announced they had sold the place for an undisclosed nominal sum to the Sanitation Department of New York City. Where divas dazzled financiers, where 50-piece orchestras played all night for Long Island's gilded youth, now white-wings who spent their lives cleaning the streets of the metropolis, inspectors who fought its diseases, engineers who disposed of its sewage, will live in luxurious vacation and retirement. Cottages will be built for pensioners. Horn & Hardart will set up a cafeteria.