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When I was a teenager growing up on Long Island, one of my favorite excursions

was a trip to see the great Gilded Age mansions of the North Shore. Those

mansions weren't just pieces of architectural history. They were monuments to

a bygone social era, one in which the rich could afford the armies of servants

needed to maintain a house the size of a European palace. By the time I saw

them, of course, that era was long past. Almost none of the Long Island

mansions were still private residences. Those that hadn't been turned into

museums were occupied by nursing homes or private schools