Henry Bloom, with Gunning Island in the background.

Rumson resident Henry H. Bloom bought a big chunk of Gunning Island in 1988, mainly because he was afraid that somebody would put houses on it and wreck his idyllic view of the Shrewsbury River.

The transaction was an unusual one. Bloom had convinced the seller — newspaper publisher Dick Scudder, whose family had owned their portion of the island for 62 years — to donate the property to Scudder’s alma mater, Princeton University. Princeton, in turn, simultaneously sold the property to Bloom and his partners, Carl Gross and Anthony Calderone.

It was a winning deal all around: Scudder got the satisfaction of philanthropy, Princeton got a pile of cash, and Bloom’s view was safeguarded.

“I thought it would be fun to own it,” he told redbankgreen yesterday. “And I wanted to preserve it.”

But Bloom admits he was also tempted by visions of a windfall. There were taxes to be paid on his 20-acre piece of the 32-acre island. Plus, it had been used as a dumping place for dredge spoils. When the muck dried and winds whipped the dust east toward condos in Sea Bright, his phone would ring with complaints.

So Bloom and his partners had some engineering work done, which showed they could put at least six homes on the island. (Readers with long memories may recall that Calderone was then CEO of homebuilder Calton Homes.) If his view was to be ruined, Bloom thought, at least he’d be the one determining what he’d be looking at from his big house near Oyster Bay.

That had environmentalists worried, even if only a single McMansion arose.

“One plantation or mansion, with boat access,” said Cindy Roberts of the Trust for Public Land, pondering what might have been. “When you think of the personalities here, the huge houses in Rumson…”

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