5. The Spratt House, Tarrytown

Spratt House Tarrytown
Image via Library of Congress

Fans of the 1960s television series Dark Shadows might recognize this lost estate. The exterior served as the setting of “The Old House” in the series. In the series, the home was built in 1767 and was the mansion of the Collins family, the first Collinwood estate, until 1796. The nearby estate of Lyndhurst served as “the new house” or the new Collinswood in the 1970s Dark Shadows feature films.

In reality, this mansion was built much later, around 1850, for Moses Grinnell’s niece and her husband. The next owners, Russell Hopkins and his wife Vera Siegrist, called it The Colonnades and it was part of their larger estate named Veruselle. It was purchased in 1929 by stockbroker William R. Spratt. The final owner was Anna Gould, Duchess de Tallyrand. Gould was the daughter of railroad magnate Jay Gould and owner of the nearby Lyndhurst estate. The house sat vacant after she died in 1961. A fire destroyed the home in 1969 and only remnants of its foundation remain.