Belle Terre

If there’s one thing that signals a community’s exclusive status, it’s the presence of entry gates. That’s exactly what you encounter on the main road into Belle Terre: a French-inspired stone and iron gate. The historic gatehouse sits on the north end of Port Jefferson at East Broadway and Cliff Drive. Belle Terre is French for beautiful land, christened by newcomer Dean Alvord, a real estate tycoon who achieved infamy for developing Prospect Park South in Brooklyn. He arrived in the area soon after the turn of the 20th century. Once he landed in Belle Terre, Alvord quickly built Nevalde, his personal estate, and constructed the private Belle Terre Club and golf course for refined New Yorkers. Members of the club included the Vanderbilts and Astors. In 1931, when the new owner of Nevalde finagled an old switcheroo on land use ordinances, essentially giving a sand-and-gravel prospecting company carte balance to dredge the harbor – most notably, without local support – villagers responded by incorporating. The mayor quickly gathered support for a law banning businesses in Belle Terre.

Incidentally, the architect responsible for the arch in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village designed the gatehouse. From its earliest days, Belle Terre was home to some very influential individuals. Post World War II, Belle Terre had a population of about 90 to 120 occupants and 50 residences. Most of them were summer retreats. By the 2020s, more than 800 people call the village home, many year-round residents.

Real estate prices in Belle Terre are some of the highest in Suffolk County until you hit the Hamptons, obviously. Prices can start around the low $800,000s for a brick colonial from the 1980s. If you’re looking for something closer to Mt. Misery, you may have to spend twice that amount. In the summer of 2023, a 12-bedroom, 18-bathroom cliff-top mansion went on the market for $15.5 million. But for an average family abode, you’re looking at anywhere from $1 million to $5 million and up.

To this day, Belle Terre is strictly residential. Port Jefferson, the neighborhood to the south, provides all of the community’s retail and business needs. Public school students in Belle Terre attend Port Jefferson Union Free School District schools. The district gets an A from Niche. There’s one public elementary school and one middle school in Port Jefferson. Port Jefferson Elementary School ranks eight out of 10 from GreatSchools for test scores and receives an A from Niche for academics and teacher performance. Port Jefferson Middle School gets the highest possible ranking for test scores and an A-plus for teacher performance. Niche says it’s the sixth-best public middle school in Suffolk County. Port Jefferson High School gets an A for academics and teacher performance, and for college readiness, it scores a perfect 10 out of 10 from GreatSchools. Some local private schools are Our Lady of Wisdom Regional School and The Laurel Hill School, both for primary and middle-school kids.

Here are some perks that come with an address in Belle Terre: The private beach has cabanas, showers and racks for kayaks, canoes and paddle boards. Port Jefferson Village West Beach is a public beach, but only for Port Jefferson residents. Throughout the year, the community organizes special events, holiday celebrations and festivals, some just for Belle Terre residents and others for the entire Port Jeff community. When it’s time for brunch or dinner, locals head to Port Jefferson – historically, an old ship-building village in Brookhaven. There, you’ll find some of the island’s best eateries. The Fifth Season on East Broadway serves locally sourced produce, fowl, dairy and cheese. The only complaint about this spot is that it’s closed from October to May. Newsday calls Slurp Ramen on West Broadway a “destination-worthy” noodle shop. No matter which direction you head in Port Jefferson, you’re bound to find a welcoming restaurant, coffee shop, bakery or pub.

Belle Terre is less than 1 square mile and has its own constabulary. And residents don’t have to drag their garbage cans to the curb on trash day. Sanitation trucks maneuver up driveways to empty cans. There are only a handful of public parking spaces in the entire community and a swift ticketing force for unregistered vehicles. If you live in Belle Terre, chances are you have a car. But that doesn’t mean you’ll have no use for the Port Jefferson train station. Sure, the city is less than 60 miles away, but traffic between the islands is notoriously a beast. The Long Island Rail Road will shuttle you or your guests to and from Manhattan. The train stops at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. Many Port Jeff residents commute to their NYC offices on weekdays. On weekends, the train rescues city dwellers from the achingly hot asphalt jungle and transports them to Long Island’s pristine beaches and marinas. The Port Jefferson train depot is a 5-minute drive to the Belle Terre gatehouse.

Pop culture fiends may be familiar with the cotton-candy-hued mansion that appeared in the 1989 film “She-Devil,” starring Meryl Streep. Incidentally, you could barely even peep the house from the road. However, you could see it from the beach or on a boat as it sat atop a bluff towering over the Long Island Sound. The iconic 1870 pink estate, once occupied by a Bulgarian countess, was razed in 2017, but it's now Belle Terre canon.

Written By

Riki Markowitz

Photography Contributed By

Joseph Popovich

Video By

Antoine Allen