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Driving through the gates of the Sands Point Preserve on Long Island’s North Shore reveals a 100,000-square-foot, turreted castle built in the early 1900s by Howard Gould, son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould. He also built 40-room Hempstead House next door, which had a walnut-paneled library copied from the palace of King James I and an aviary housing exotic birds.
Now part of a public park, these structures serve as a ghostly reminder of the vast estates that once stood on the jagged coastline of Long Island’s Gold Coast,…