Grey Gardens, the renowned Long Island estate once home to Jackie Kennedy’s eccentric cousins and profiled in a 1975 documentary of the same name, has a new set of owners.
On Wednesday, Corcoran real estate announced that an anonymous New York City couple had bought the East Hampton home for $15.5million.
Listing agent Michael Schultz said that the couple ‘were very familiar with the house’ and ‘had been looking at it for some time’. He says they are planning on ‘lovingly restoring it’.
Grey Gardens, the renowned Long Island estate once home to Jackie Kennedy’s eccentric cousins and profiled in a 1975 documentary of the same name, has a new set of owners
The listing agent said Wednesday that the home has been sold to a couple from New York City who plan on ‘lovingly’ restoring it
The home was originally put on the market in February for $19.995million. The price was later cut to $15.5million
The home is situated on 1.7 acres just 100 yards from Georgica Beach and some of the rooms have views of the Atlantic Ocean
The three-story main house includes seven bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms. Outside there’s a tennis court, the namesake gardens, and a heated gunite pool
The home is situated on 1.7 acres just 100 yards from Georgica Beach and some of the rooms have views of the Atlantic Ocean. The three-story main house includes seven bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms. Outside there’s a tennis court, the namesake gardens, and a heated gunite pool.
The announcement comes a little less than a year after the current owner Sally Quinn, widow of the late Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, listed the summer home for $19.995million.
Grey Gardens was on the verge of falling down in 1975, when a documentary crew interviewed then owners Edith ‘Big Edie’ Beale and her spinster daughter ‘Little Edie’.
The home was on the verge of collapse in 1975 when documentary filmmakers interviewed then owners Big Edie and Little Edie Beale (pictured)
The home fell into disrepair when Big Edie (seated) and her daughter became impoverished
The home had fallen into disrepair when the mother and daughter were left penniless when Big Edie’s husband left her in 1931, and she was later cut out of her father’s will.
In the 60s, the two cut themselves off the world and began hoarding. When the documentary crew visited the mother and daughter, the house was on the verge of collapse and filled with trash and cats.
In 1971, neighbors had started to complain about the state of the house, and Suffolk County inspectors threatened the Beales with an eviction if they didn’t clean the place up.
Since they didn’t have the money to take on the project, their relative, former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, and her second husband, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, stepped in to foot the bill.
Big Edie lived in Grey Gardens until her death in 1977. Two years later, her daughter sold the home to then Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, columnist Sally Quinn.
The couple used it as their summer home until Bradlee’s death in 2014.
The home was originally built in 1896 and at one point was regarded as having one of the best gardens in the area
Above, two twin beds are seen in one of the bedrooms of the home
The home has been rumored to be haunted by the Beales
The home is currently decorated like a cozy English cottage, but the new owners will no doubt put their own mark on it
A movie poster for the 1975 documentary of the house hangs on an upstairs floor
The home has six-and-a-half bedrooms, including this one
Above, a view of the homes gardens as they are planted today, surrounded by tall hedges
A little hut sits in the back of the famous residence
Quinn decided to sell the home last year, after being unable to enjoy it anymore since her husband’s passing.
‘I just don’t want to go back there anymore,’ she said in February, according to Town & Country. ‘I went there last summer and it was just not a happy time.
She initially listed the home in February for $19.995million, but later cut the price by about $5million.
In November, Quinn opened the house to the public to sell off all the items that the Beales left behind when they sold the house to them.
Quinn said she was ‘a little bit sad’ to sell the furniture but she doesn’t ‘have any place to put it’.
‘This is a bittersweet moment for me, but I feel grateful that the new owners will cherish the house as much as Ben, [our son] Quinn and I did, and that their time there will be as magical as ours was,’ Quinn said in a statement.
In 1979, Little Edie sold the home to then Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee and his columnist wife Sally Quinn (pictured together in an undated photo). Quinn decided to sell the house because she doesn’t spend much time there since her husband died in 2014
In November, Quinn opened the home for an estate sale. People lined up around the block to get in
Quinn said she was sad to part with the home’s furnishings, but she didn’t have anywhere to put them