FOREIGN RELATIONS: House in the Country

Residents of Long Island’s fashionable North Shore have been watching Killenworth—the late George Dupont Pratt’s fabulous 52-room country house—with jaundiced eyes ever since the Soviet Purchasing Commission bought it in 1946. When the Russians rimmed its 37 acres of lawns with barbed wire, set up playground equipment and converted it into a recreation center, nearby estate owners fairly gobbled with indignation.

The Russians blandly ignored their capitalistic neighbors. This summer, however, the Russians took a more conciliatory tone, and asked the State Department to intercede with local authorities about the $14,000 in annual taxes they were paying on Killenworth. Since Soviet U.N. Chieftain Jacob Malik was to use the mansion henceforth, couldn’t the place be declared taxexempt?

Last week Mayor Luke A. Mercadante of Glen Cove, L.I., sent the State Department the answer: no. According to New York tax laws, there was no provision for any such exception. Breathing heavily, he also passed on some information of a semi-global nature: Malik, through an intermediary, had asked a local merchant to carpet the house with material which would wear at least three years.