At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.
A vast oceanfront estate once owned by the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, and her then-husband actor Herbert Ross, has hit the market for $120 million.
The seller is Ann Tenenbaum, a venture capital-investor and widow of the late financier and private-equity pioneer Thomas H. Lee. The couple spent summers in the house for more than 20 years with their children and ended up rebuilding the property twice during that time.
In the wake of Lee’s passing last year, Tenenbaum has decided to sell since she always preferred the desert to the beach, she told The Wall Street Journal.
“It was very much his place,” Tenenbaum told The WSJ. “I loved having family and friends around. I just didn’t love the Hamptons.”
Hedgerow Exclusive Properties and Modlin Group Hamptons are co-representing the listing.
The 14,000-square-foot home sits on about 3.6 acres and is situated in one of East Hampton’s ritziest areas, around the corner from Further Lane, where a property sold for $137 million in 2014, and a few paces from The Maidstone Club, a longstanding private country club for the city’s elite.
The home was initially built in the 1900s and part of an 80-acre estate owned by ink manufacturer Frank Wiborg, according to Philistines at the Hedgerow by Steven Gaines.
[Inman Slideshow]
The main house includes eight bedrooms, and there is also a two-bedroom guesthouse on the property. It includes 225 feet of ocean frontage.
Lee purchased the property in 2001 from Lee Radziwill for $16.2 million after news broke that Radziwill and Ross were divorcing. Prior to that, Tenenbaum and Lee had actually rented the house for a time from the couple. After Tenenbaum told her husband the news, “He bought it without even telling me,” Tenenbaum told The WSJ.
As new owners of the home, Tenenbaum and Lee had planned on simply expanding the home, but ultimately discovered that it had structural issues, so it needed to be rebuilt. Tenenbaum largely wanted the home to be rebuilt as it had been, but new additions included a basement with two bedrooms, a playroom, a laundry and a walk-in refrigerator.
The couple also added a tunnel that attaches the pool area to some cabanas in the home’s lower level, so that people wouldn’t track sand directly into the main area of the house.
“I always have family around and people to feed,” Tenenbaum told The WSJ.
She and Lee had three children together, and Lee had two children from a prior marriage. Tenenbaum also explained that the couple largely had an open-door policy while in the Hamptons and were always entertaining.
In 2013, there was an electrical fire in the basement, and the house incurred smoke and water damage as result. Yet another rebuilding was called for, and the couple renovated again, still preserving the spirit of the original house. This time, they added a home theater and karaoke room to the lower level.
Tenenbaum returned to the Hamptons the summer after her husband passed away, but has decided to move on to other locales.
“I’m done with the Hamptons,” she told The WSJ. “Now it’s my time to go to Santa Fe or Malibu or Greece — I don’t know — maybe I want to be a gypsy for a little bit.”
Since her children still have an attachment to the Hamptons, Tenenbaum said she’ll likely buy a smaller house in the area.
Luxury sales in the Hamptons rose 27.8 percent between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel. As of the first quarter of 2024, the median luxury sale price rose 24.7 percent on an annual basis.
Get Inman’s Luxury Lens Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly deep dive into the biggest news in the world of high-end real estate delivered every Friday. Click here to subscribe.
