Land Surveyor in Plandome Manor, Nassau County, NY

The Village of Plandome Manor incorporated in 1931. Like the villages of Plandome and Plandome Heights to its south, Plandome Manor derives its name from the Latin ‘Planus Domus’, meaning plain, or level home. The manor house of Matthias Nicoll who was an early mayor of New York City and among the first generation of the Nicoll family on Long Island, was a wood-frame home built in the 1670s, and one of the first homesteads in this area of Cow Neck, the namesake of the Cow Neck Peninsula (also known as the Manhasset/Port Washington Peninsula). The manor itself was torn down in 1998 and replaced with another estate.

Author Frances H. Burnett, author of The Secret Garden, built her home, Fairseat, in Plandome Park in 1908, and lived there until her death in 1924. Burnett’s son, Vivian, and his wife Constance, had erected a home nearby on Bayview Road after their marriage. Following Frances Burnett’s death, her nephew, publisher Archer P. Fahnestock moved into Fairseat, but the home burned down leaving only the stucco carriage house and garden intact. In 1940, Fahnestock sold it to Leroy Grumman.