02 September 2007
The Captain and the Eagle
(Left to right: Harry F. Guggenheim, Dr. Robert Goddard, Charles Lindbergh)
The most impressive of the Long Island Gold Coast Mansions was Castle Gould, built by railroad heir Howard Gould at Sand Point, Long Island. It was the turn of the century before this brave new one.
The turreted castle was intended to be an equestrian center and carriage house. It conveyed a massive majesty, and a statement on the permanence of the fortunes acquired by the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age. The stables were patterned after Ireland's Kilkenny Castle, and built of limestone hewn from the living gray rock of New York State.
Howard Gould, son of the Railroad King Jay Gould was the man who caused it to be erected on the bluff over Long Island Sound.
If the castle was intended to convey permanence, it did not work out that way. His marriage foundered, as they do, and the property was sold, furnished, at a loss of millions as war broke out in Europe.
The simulated battlements of the castle brood over the Great Lawn to the main residence of Hempstead House, designed by noted architects Hunt and Hunt in the style of an imaginary Tudor period.
Daniel gave ninety acres of the Castle Gould reserve to his son Harry as a wedding present in 1922. Harry was a flamboyant young aviation enthusiast and equestrian who served overseas as one of the first American Naval Aviators. Harry liked to be called “The Captain,” and he built his own residence on the property the next year.
It was an elaborate recreation of a 13th century Norman chateau overlooking the mile of pristine beachfront. He called the house “Falaise,” for the cliff on which it stands.
The design includes an enclosed cobblestone courtyard, thickly mortared brick walls, steeply pitched roofs of heavy tile, and a round tower. Inside the house are arches, thick wood beams, textured plastered walls, and carved stone mantels. It is said that author Scott Fitzgerald regarded the Castle Gould property as a metaphor for old money, though it was still new. He used it as a template for the mythical East Egg in The Great Gatsby.
The Guggenheims were like the Rothschild banking dynasty of Europe. They were a Jewish whose wealth and good works generally overcame the religious bias of the times. It is a nuanced acceptance; Harry was the first of his faith admitted to the prestigious Jockey Club of New York, but it was not until 1951.
When the Lone Eagle, Charles Lindbergh, made his celebrated solo flight to Paris he became the first Rock Star of the new media age. He needed a place to hide out from the crowds, and at the Captain's invitation Falaise was where sought refuge.
That began a friendship that spanned four decades and the rest of both their lives. It was at Falaise that Lindbergh had one of his first dates with his future wife, Anne Morrow, daughter of a business partner of Harry's. Lindbergh helped Robert Goddard obtain funds from Harry's father Daniel Guggenheim to build a laboratory near Roswell NM for rocket research to stay ahead of German rockets.
The growing German threat was something that Lindbergh knew first hand. He provided the War Department with valuable intelligence on the growing strength of the Luftwaffe after visits to Germany in the 1930s. His view was that the Germans were too dangerous to fight, and that America ought to stay out of the European mess altogether.
The Jews and the British were trying to drag America down.
The Lone Eagle was being played by the Nazis. On one trip to the Fatherland he accepted a medal from Air Marshal Hermann Goering, with whom he had a personal relationship. He made public statements about the invincibility of the Nazis and their value as a counterweight to the growing menace of the Soviet Union.
Lindbergh made a speech in Des Moines three months before Pearl Harbor that defined the rest of his life and cost him his commission in the Air Corps. He stood before a throng of America First partisans and condemned Jewish efforts to drag America into the war.
Lucky Lindy never understood the hostile reaction to his remarks. He denied being an anti-Semite to his dying day, thought he never returned the gold medal that the Luftwaffe gave him.
That makes his relationship with the Captain that much more peculiar. Perhaps Harry was accustomed enough to the genteel racism of American society that he let it roll off. Perhaps Lindbergh was just confused on that point. It did not appear to be a matter worth ruining a friendship.
The firestorm over the speech made the Lone Eagle persona non grata to the government. He was a lightning rod for the hostility of the Roosevelt administration, and resigned his reserve commission as an Air Corps Colonel in protest. The President would not let him have it back when the shooting started.
After the Japanese attack in 1941, the Captain insisted on returning to active duty, pulling strings to see action despite his age. His mother also wanted to support the war effort, and donated 162 acres and the two heroic structures at Castle Gould to the Institute of Aeronautical Science.
That is who held the title when the Navy was looking for a place for its Germans. A quiet transfer in title was arranged, and the Navy called the castle the Special Devices Center where its new German employees could work undisturbed and out of sight.
Guard shacks were set up, and the Germans arrived in 1946 along with Naval Intelligence. Dr. Hienz Schlike was the most renowned of the Germans, having developed the first infa-red technologies, but his comrades were experts in missile technology and electronics. Dr. Faick was one of the Kreigsmarine's top ship designers; others included senior production engineers from the Messerschmitt works and specialists on night fighter techniques and advanced electronics.
Like Von Braun, whose team sent men into orbit, Dr. Schlike and his comrades made the Navy the most formidable on the planet.
At first the scientists were restricted to the grounds, since they technically were not far removed from being enemy aliens. Soon enough, thought, their families joined them in Long Island. In short order, the inmates were running the asylum.
The Captain could see it all happen from Falaise. He remained close friends with the Lone Eagle, whose reputation rehabilitated after the war, His autobiography won a Pulitzer, and he was made a Brigadier in the new Air Force, a celebrity General Officer like actor Jimmy Stewart.
The Lone Eagle was a complex man, and turned from aviation to environmental issues, crisscrossing the globe to raise funds for the protection of the earth. In his travels, he fathered at least three children (and as many as seven) with women in Germany, though he remained married to his wife Ann.
Eventually he fled the public eye for the remote village of Kipahulu on Maui.
The scientists of the former Nazi regime worked with great industry at the Special Devices Center adjacent to Harry Guggenheim's estate. The Intelligence officers from New York no longer were required to oversee their activities, and the District Office in New York was shut down in one of the periodic re-organizations intended to imitate progress.
After all, the Mob was not longer needed to protect the docks, since they ran them with efficiency. The German scientists were just good Americans now in the great struggle with the Russians, just as the Lone Eagle had predicted.
The Navy moved out of Sand Point in 1967, and transferred title to Nassau County as a nature preserve. The Captain died in 1971, and his will specified that Falaise become part of the County park.
You can visit it today and tour the houses for a small fee. There is a lot of history there. Two of the scenes from the movie “The Godfather" were shot in the house, under license from the Preserve: the dining scene, shot in the living room, and the infamous horse-head scene, shot in the dining room.
At Falaise, the Lone Eagle's Ford Falcon station wagon sits in the carport next to the Captain's Cadillac, and many of Lindbergh's books fill the shelves. He hated to see them empty, after Harry donated his own collections to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis
The historic homes of the Sand Point Wildlife Preserve are open to the public now, and furnished much as they were before the Germans came. On display are the hundreds of equestrian awards that the Captain won in his career with the horses.
If Nazis were also laundered in the castle, there is no specific mention of it, nor of the Third District Intelligence organization that brought them there.
Like Fort Hunt, it is just an interesting place off the main road. The property at Castle Gould is just a another roadside attraction, suitable for hiking and picnics.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Close Window