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This article first ran in the September 2005 issue of the Auctioneer.
Photos courtesy of the National Auctioneers Museum
Auction on the premises of Inisfada, Manhasset, Long Island , NY , 1937.
By Lynn M. Ward, Curator, National Auctioneers Museum
Twenty minutes away from Manhattan , NY, lays a quiet St. Ignatius Jesuit Retreat House set in a beautiful mansion. The mansion, known as “Inisfada”—Gaelic for “ Long Island ”—was first owned by the utilities millionaires Nicholas and Genevieve Brady. Built between 1916-20 as a summer home, the 87 room mansion sits on 33 acres of rolling lawns and gardens. It was the fourth largest mansion in 1920. The Bradys had collected beautiful and unusual treasures from all over the world to fill their castle-like mansion. They cherished their Persian palace carpet and a seventeenth century rug upon which stood the thrones of Edward VII and his consort at coronation. They cherished their original Whistler and Frederic Remington paintings, Waterford candelabras and chandeliers, and exquisite furniture--some from the 17th and 18th centuries and earlier.
Mr. Brady passed away in 1930. Mrs. Brady remarried a few years later in 1937 to the Irish Free State Minister to the Vatican, William J. Babington Macaulay. Since Mrs. Brady (Mrs. Macaulay) planned to move to Rome, she no longer needed “Inisfada.” She made the announcement that she was going to turn her great Long Island estate over to the Society of Jesus to be used as a seminary.
She made arrangements with Anderson Galleries in New York to auction the contents of Inisfada with the proceeds going to the Catholic Church. Mrs. Brady, a cultured and exemplary Catholic, had made use of her vast wealth in innumerable Catholic charities. Her interest was not limited to merely Catholic enterprises. She had been very active, under Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in relieving the distressed women in the serious financial depression of the times. Also, she was head of the Board of the Girl Scouts of America. For four days before the auction, Inisfada was open for Exhibition. The admission charge to the Exhibition was 50 cents with the proceeds apportioned among the Girl Scouts Federation of Greater New York; Nassau Hospital at Mineola, Long Island; and the Social Service Committee of City Hospital at Welfare Island in New York.
 The auction took place in May of 1937 and lasted 6 days. Mrs. Macaulay was in her Roman villa while thousands of strangers roamed over Inisfada and crowded into its 87 rooms to buy its $600,000 worth of furnishings. Jacobean and Queen Anne furniture, Gothic tapestries, beautiful linens, table silver and porcelain, paintings, Oriental rugs, and other amazing items, including this bench, were auctioned by Hiram H. Parke, Otto Bernet and H.E. Russell Jr.  Admission to the auction was by card only. Those who wished to attend had to apply to the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries, Inc. on East 57th Street in New York . “Attendance Limited to Capacity of the Premises” states the auction catalog, which is an impressive 555 pages long. The catalog, in the archives of the National Auctioneers Museum , is filled with descriptions of 2115 lots with many photographs of the items.
The National Auctioneers Museum is continuing to collect historic auction catalogs similar to the Brady Collection Auction. Please let me know if you are interested in donating your historic auction catalogs to the museum or if you have any information on other American Art Association-Anderson Galleries auctions.
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