Longue Vue House and Gardens is a nonprofit historic museum, a National Historic Landmark, and the masterwork of pioneering 20th-century landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman. Shipman was one of the leading garden designers of her day, with a client list including the Edisons, Fords, and Vanderbilts. She worked on Longue Vue between 1935 and 1950 in close collaboration with owners Edith and Edgar Stern, earning the couple's confidence to the extent that they replaced their original 1920s home with a new house, completed in 1942 and designed to match Shipman's gardens. Shipman hand-picked the architects, and she personally designed the home's interiors down to the smallest detail.
This extraordinary connection of house and gardens, guided by Shipman, resulted in one of the most noteworthy garden estates of the 20th century and a critically important document of American landscape design history. And the interest of Longue Vue goes far beyond the beauty of the estate: The Stern family activated Longue Vue in the service of horticulture, the arts, and community, with cultural, social, and political implications lasting into the 21st century.