After Mrs. Stein’s purchase of the Keller house on December 1, 1922, she and her husband Arthur S, Stein were only Island homeowners until January 29, 1926, when they purchased lots 8, 9 and 11-16, of the Villa Sites at West Neck Park, 6.16 acres, from Peter Elbert Nostrand, 430 Sterling Place, Brooklyn. The deed stated that no more than two houses and one stable could be built on any one lot. The Stein’s intentions were to build a hotel on the acreage overlooking the Bay.
Elisabeth also purchased two Florence Park lots that
Florence Keller had sold to George M. Boardman in 1917, now owned by Catherine
W. Boardman, on April 26, 1926 with a mortgage for $3,600. Elisabeth sold
these lots to Daniel Schultheis on August 30, 1926.The mortgage on the Heights house went into foreclosure on March 1, 1930. Riverhead Savings Bank now owned the Heights house; it boarded up the house with heavy wooden shutters and waited for a buyer during the next ten years of economic depression that gripped the entire country.
The story is that in the process of building the hotel, the Steins ran out of money, and, indeed, the hotel property, in the name of the Greenland Hotel Company, Inc. and Arthur S. Stein, was transferred by a referee, Almon G. Rasquin, to Francis A. Myers on May 19, 1930 in satisfaction of a “mechanic’s lien.” The property is now the Pridwin Hotel.
The 1930 Census, conducted on April 16, found Arthur S. and Elisabeth P. Stein living in New York City on Riverside Drive with three small children, William, 4, Robert, 3, and Elisabeth, less than a year. Arthur was 46 years old and a sales administrator in the rubber business, and Elisabeth was 39 and not employed.
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