Grey Gardens, the elite Long Island estate that fell into ruin when owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ reclusive relatives and was later restored by journalist Sally Quinn and her husband, Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, is for sale for the first time in 40 years.
When filmmaker Albert Maysles spoke at the Ashland Film Festival in 2008, the audience was on the edge of their seat when he talked about the upbeat but unhinged women living in squalor in the once magnificent Grey Gardens estate.
He and his brother, David Maysles, famously interviewed the women in their decaying mansion in 1975.
Later, the riches to rags tale of the once-wealthy female owners inspired a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, an HBO movie starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, and an informative, well-written blog, Grey Gardens Online.
Today, the mansion in the tony seaside Georgica Pond neighborhood of East Hampton is on the market. The price: $19.995 million.
Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill spent summers at the estate owned by their aunt, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, who was known as “Big Edie.” There, they played with their cousin, Edith Bouvier Beale, aka “Little Edie.”
When Big Edie’s husband left the family in 1931 for another woman, their lives, fortune and estate went downhill.
The odd world the two women lived in was exposed in the Enquirer and New York Magazine. Reports described filth, fleas, cats and raccoons. The health department told the women to clean up the house or leave.
Unable to afford to hire help, Kennedy Onassis and Radziwill paid for repairs and the removal of overgrown vegetation and hundreds of bags of trash.
Big Edie died in 1977 and her daughter sold the house in 1979 for $220,000 to Quinn and Bradlee.
Little Edie then moved to Florida where she died in 2002.
Quinn renovated the house as a summer getaway, matching Casino Siteleri unearthed fabrics and restoring original furnishings. French doors were installed in the back of the house to capture a view of the ocean across the newly landscaped gardens.
When Bradlee died in 2014, Quinn rented the estate for $250,000 each summer. Recently, she decided to put it up for sale, according to listing agents Michael Schultz and Susan Ryan of The Corcoran Group.
On just under two acres, the house has about 6,000 square feet of living space with nine bedrooms, six baths and venues for entertaining. There is a detached guest house, a heated pool and a Har-Tru Tennis court.
– Homes & Gardens of the Northwest staff based on research by TopTenRealEstateReals.com
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