Quotes of the Day

It's time to give up our fantasies of attending lavish prohibition era parties with Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.

Lands End, the grand colonial mansion believed to be the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan's Great Gatsby home, is going to be torn down. It costs $4,500 each day to maintain the 1902 estate, worth $30 million. The 13-acre property in Sands Point, Long Island will make way for five custom homes costing $10 million each.

The early 20th century home will join hundreds of others demolished along Long Island's Gold Coast, named for its wealthy inhabitants during the first half of the century.

In The Great Gatsby, the Gold Coast old-money community is known as "East Egg." Jay Gatsby lives across the river in "West Egg," the new-money town of Great Neck. While Fitzgerald was a regular at Gold Coast soirees, he lived in Great Neck, in a house that still exists.

Lands End, originally known as Keewaydin, was once owned by New York World owner Herbert Baynard Swope.

Current owner David Brodsky has some doubts as to whether Fitzgerald was ever actually on the estate. "To be honest with you there isn't anything really special about it," Brodsky told the New York Post. "We did a lot of research on its history and there is really no evidence that Fitzgerald was even ever there."

Brodsky and his father purchased the property in 2004 for $17.5 million.

If Lands End is really Daisy Buchanan's mansion, than its memory will live on for generations in American high school classrooms.

• Zoe Fox