In 1878, Alva and William Kissam Vanderbilt began building a lavish, wooden 110-room home known as Idle Hour, on a estate on the Connetquot River. The building, initially completed in 1882, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt of Hunt & Hunt, continuously added to until the home was destroyed by fire on April 15, 1899, while his son, Willie K. Vanderbilt, was honeymooning there. Willie and his new wife, Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, escaped the fire. His daughter Consuelo had also honeymooned there when she married the Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895. It was promptly rebuilt of red brick and gray stone in the English Country Style, with exquisite furnishings, for $3 million. The building, at the time was considered among the finest homes in America, was designed by Hunt's son, Richard Howland Hunt. The rebuilt "estate included nearly all of Oakdale, 290 or 300 buildings, a herd of steer and a paddlewheel steamer to ferry guests up and down the Connetquot River alongside the mansion." Around 1902, an addition was made to Idle Hour by the promient architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore.
Later ownership
After Vanderbilt's death in 1920, the mansion went through several phases and visitors, including a brief stay during Prohibition by gangster Dutch Schultz. Around that time, cow stalls, pig pens and corn cribs on the farm portion of Idle Hour were converted into a short-lived bohemian artists' colony, known as the Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians, that included figures such as George Elmer Browne and Roman Bonet-Sintas as well as sculptress Catherine Lawson, costume designer Olga Meervold, and pianist Claude Govier, and Francis Gow-Smith and his wife Carol. In 1963, Adelphi College purchased the estate and, in 1968, spun the campus off as Dowling College. In March 1974, the home sustained its second fire and required a $3 million renovation. The estate was home to Dowling College, a private co-educational college, until the college closed inAugust 2016. In 2017, Idle Hour and the Dowling Campus were set to be auctioned off. In 2018, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Central Islip approved the $14 million purchase of the site. by Mercury International LLC of Delaware, an affiliate of NCF Capital Ltd.
