F.W. Woolworth's 1916 Italian Renaissance marble mansion in Glen Cove, where his daughter Edna died by suicide at The Plaza in 1917 and a crack appeared across her face in the family crest that same night.
77 Crescent Beach Rd, Glen Cove, NY 11542
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Drive-by exterior view from Crescent Beach Road only. Property is privately owned; no public interior access.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Residential road; exterior viewable from public street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1916 · Built 1916 for F.W. Woolworth; C.P.H. Gilbert architect · National Register of Historic Places since 1979 · One of the surviving Gold Coast mansions of Long Island's Gilded Age · Edna Woolworth Hutton died at The Plaza Hotel, May 2, 1917
Frank Winfield Woolworth, founder of the five-and-dime retail chain that bore his name, built Winfield Hall between 1916 and 1917 on 16.4 acres in Glen Cove, Nassau County. Architect C.P.H. Gilbert designed the 32,098-square-foot structure in the Italian Renaissance style, with marble walls and pillars throughout. Total construction cost reached approximately $9 million; the grand staircase alone cost $2 million. The estate includes the main residence, a large garage with living quarters, a main entrance arch, two greenhouses, and a tea house.
Woolworth occupied the mansion for roughly two years before dying in his bed at Winfield Hall in 1919, from septic poisoning. His three daughters — Helena, Jessie, and Edna — had figured prominently in his household. Edna Woolworth Hutton, the middle daughter, died on May 2, 1917, at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. Her death was officially recorded as suffocation from an ear infection, but multiple accounts — including Untapped Cities and Gothic Horror Stories — document that the manner was suicide, following her discovery of her husband's affair. She was at The Plaza; Woolworth was hosting a party at Winfield Hall that same evening.
The estate was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Later uses included a research facility starting in 1945 and a business school for women beginning in 1963. On January 28, 2015, a significant fire damaged portions of the mansion. As of early 2026 the property was listed for auction with a guaranteed minimum bid of $7 million, with restoration work underway.
Sources
The crack in the marble family crest is Winfield Hall's defining piece of ghost lore. The crest, mounted above a fireplace and carved with the faces of Woolworth's three daughters, reportedly developed a fracture precisely through Edna's likeness on the night of her death at The Plaza. Most accounts attribute this to a lightning strike. The crest remains a focal point of the estate's paranormal reputation, and its geography is important: Edna died at The Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, not at Winfield Hall, a distinction the building's fable_build_note makes explicit.
When the mansion operated as a business school for women in the 1960s, students and staff described hearing a woman crying from within the locked 'Marie Antoinette' room — a room sometimes misidentified in ghost accounts as the site of Edna's death, which it was not. Multiple accounts describe the crying as distinct and sourceless.
Organ music playing with no one at the instrument has been reported across different eras of the mansion's occupancy. The Untapped Cities feature on the property documents that a secretary reportedly saw a crying woman in the mansion and died of a heart attack shortly after. A woman in a blue dress, assumed to be Edna, is associated with the garden grounds.
The 2015 fire and subsequent vacancy have kept the interior inaccessible to investigators, so the paranormal record is anchored in the school-era accounts from the 1960s and earlier.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Winfield Hall's marble facade and grounds are partially visible from Crescent Beach Road. The estate is private property; do not enter. The 48,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance structure remains one of the most significant surviving Gold Coast mansions on Long Island.
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