Old Westbury Gardens is the former estate of John Shaffer Phipps (1874–1958), heir to a U.S. Steel fortune, in Nassau County, New York at 71 Old Westbury Road in Old Westbury, New York. Old Westbury Gardens Grounds Work on the estate began in 1903, when John Shaffer Phipps promised his British fiancée Margarita he would build her a home in the United States that resembled her family estate in Battle Abbey. The estate was ready for Phipps, his wife and their children in 1906. Westbury House, the Charles II-style mansion designed by George A. Crawley, contains 23 rooms.