One of the many Gold Coast mansions that lays claim to be the
inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gapsby, the 140-room Beacon
House in Sands Point was built from 1918 for Alva Belmont, the ex-wife of
William K. Vanderbilt. Belmont was a involved in the women’s suffragist
movement and once ran a girl’s farm school at her mansion. William Randolph
Hearst purchased the mansion from Belmont in 1927. Three years after Hearst
sold it in 1942, Beacon Towers was demolished.
