See inside a historic 50,000-square-foot mansion on New York's Gold Coast that's featured in 'The Gilded Age'

• Hempstead House at Sands Point Preserve offers guided tours to learn about its history.
• Originally owned by Howard Gould, the estate was later sold to the Guggenheims in 1917.
• The mansion served various roles, including housing WWII refugees, before becoming a public park.

The North Shore of Long Island is known as the Gold Coast thanks to its collection of lavish mansions, which date back to the early 1900s. Many of these homes are thought to have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's West Egg in "The Great Gatsby."

One such mansion is Hempstead House, which is located in Sands Point Preserve, a 216-acre park about 30 miles outside New York City.

The entire estate was once owned by Howard Gould, a financier. He sold the land to Daniel and Florence Guggenheim in 1917, according to the preserve's history.

The Guggenheims lived in Hempstead House together until 1930, when Daniel died. Florence then sold all of the furniture and moved to a smaller home on the property.

Hempstead House has had quite a journey since then, according to the Sands Point Preserve: British refugee children lived there during World War II, then the land was acquired by the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, which in turn donated it to the US Navy. The first in-flight simulator was even tested there.

By 1971, the land was in the ownership of Nassau County, which turned the former Guggenheim estate into a park, turned two of the mansions into museums, and opened the park up to anyone willing to buy a ticket.

In July 2024, I paid $15 to park at Sands Point Preserve and then another $10 to take a guided tour of Hempstead House.

Here's what it was like inside the 112-year-old mansion and what I learned about life there.