Dans Hamptons

The former estate of Andy Warhol in Montauk has been sold to Millard Drexler of New York City, who is the chief executive of the J. Crew clothing store chain. The price has not been officially disclosed, but those connected to the sale say it went for something less than $30 million.

The estate has been on the market for four years, originally with an asking price of $50 million, which, if it had been sold for that amount, would have been the largest sum paid for a private home on eastern Long Island. About a year and a half ago, the asking price was reduced to $40 million and at that price, there was interest. The house, while not the biggest or most architecturally distinctive in these parts, has a fascinating history and an ambiance that is very remarkable indeed.

The property where this house was built originally consisted of 22 oceanfront acres. In recent years, 16 acres of this was deeded away to the Nature Conservancy and so today six acres remain. At the time of the purchase of this property, in the 1920s, there were only six homes in existence on the six-mile oceanfront stretch between town and the Lighthouse. Located directly on the Atlantic Ocean, to the west of this property, these six homes were marvelous summer “cottages” built in the grand manner, three and a half stories tall, with magnificent wrap around porches. They were all built at the same time, in the 1890s, by a group of Newport socialites intent on starting a new social colony on Long Island. They called this colony the Montauk Association. And architect Stanford White was hired to design them. They are among his masterpieces.
Here, about a mile beyond the last of these homes, and a full three miles before the Montauk Lighthouse, Mr. Richard E. Church, a New York industrialist, purchased the 22 acres on the ocean in 1922 and began to build his vacation home. There were 600 feet of oceanfront.

This was a much more modest affair than the Montauk Association. There was a long driveway ending in a loop, bringing the Churches to a small compound of buildings that included a stable, a three-car garage, a main house with six bedrooms and five baths and, separate from that, three more guest house bungalows. They are all just one-story tall though the main house has an open beamed living room under its pitched roof. The structures are white clapboard with modest windows. They are arranged in a rough semicircle facing a grassy common defined by the gravel driveway looping around. On the other side there is a cliff, a rocky beach and the sea. Great mists and fogs roll in from time to time. The roofs of the Montauk Association homes are visible if you look to the east through the dunes. In every other direction, there is nothing but pastureland.

One and a half generations later, in the mid-1960s, the Church family had lost interest in the property, and they decided to put it up for sale. In 1972, pop art painter Andy Warhol and his longtime filmmaker producer companion, Paul Morrissey, purchased the property together for $200,000. They kept it pretty much as-is and made relatively infrequent trips out to it, using it only occasionally from time to time during the next fifteen years as an isolated summer retreat.

It is during this time, from 1972 to Andy Warhol’s unexpected death while in the hospital recovering from a minor gallbladder surgery at a New York hospital in 1987, that the property earned its reputation.

Warhol, busy making films and artwork at his “factory” on Union Square, came out only rarely, but was very generous with giving friends and acquaintances the use of the place. Around 1985, he gave the place up to the Rolling Stones for three months so they could rehearse for one of their World Tours. The Stones wrote a song there about a particular motel in Montauk, called “Memory Motel.” It is on their Black and Blue album.

Numerous films were made at the property, by Warhol and others, either as art films or as home movies. There is a wonderful 8-millimeter home movie of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her children out there with her sister Lee Radziwill and Warhol. They run around on the lawn, playing games and getting themselves wet with a hose. Adventurer Peter Beard and his wife Cheryl Tiegs had stopped by and they are to be seen in the film enjoying the day here too.

Whether great art was ever made here is not known, but it seems that the estate was considered a family place to just hang out and get some much-needed sun during those years. There was lots of horseback riding to be done, hiking and swimming and surfing. The nearest neighbors, other than those in the Association Homes, were at the Deep Hollow Ranch and Indian Field Ranch, which were working dude and cattle ranches about a mile away. The cowboys on those properties would pass by on their way to the beach on horseback. It is hard to imagine a more idyllic spot than this place.

After Warhol’s death, Morrissey came out to the estate, which he now called ‘Eothen,’ even less than Warhol did. Then, finally, in 2001, he gave away about 2/3 of the vacant part of the property to the Nature Conservancy. Then he put the place on the market. In many ways, regardless of what Morrissey asked for it or what Drexler paid for it, this property is priceless. It is also magical.