The History of Ralph Lauren’s Estate in Bedford, New York

By Gary Lawrance

Oatlands. That’s what Ralph Lauren’s home in Bedford, New York, featured as the cover story of AD’s September issue, was originally called. The estate was so christened by its first owner, landscape designer Robert Ludlow Fowler, Jr., who in the early 1920s enlisted the help of preeminent New York architecture firm Delano & Aldrich in designing it. Bedford’s lushly forested and rolling landscape, evocative of the English countryside, has long been a place of quiet wealth. Since the early 1900s, members of New York society seeking to avoid the social spotlight of places like Newport, Rhode Island; Southampton, New York; or Lenox, Massachusetts, have gathered there....

An aerial view of the Oatlands estate. Photo courtesy of DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, Robert Yarnall Richie Photograph Collection...