This grand Connecticut estate once sold for a record nine-figure sum — and now it’s returned for sale, asking an even higher price.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Copper Beech Farm in affluent Greenwich, which spans 50 acres and features about a mile of frontage along the Long Island Sound, has listed for a cool $150 million. That’s $30 million more than the $120 million the property last sold for in 2014 — which, at the time, was the highest price ever paid for a home in the US.
Despite the glory of that 2014 title, the new $150 million asking price — though nothing to sniff at — wouldn’t break the same record, should a deep-pocketed buyer claim this spread for that mighty price. In early 2019, billionaire hedge fund titan Ken Griffin purchased an apartment at 220 Central Park South in Manhattan for approximately $240 million — a dollar figure that still wears the crown as the record price paid for a US home. (The $150 million ticket price is also $100 million below that for a $250 million triplex penthouse in Central Park Tower in Manhattan, which listed for sale in late 2022.)
The owners of this Connecticut offering, meanwhile, still aren’t known — nearly a decade after that record purchase. One of the listing representatives, Leslie McElwreath of Sotheby’s International Realty, declined the Journal’s request to comment on the owners, saying only that they’re “Connecticutites.” Their identity has also reportedly been a “closely guarded secret” within Greenwich since that 2014 deal with timber magnate John Rudey. All that exists is an LLC called The Conservation Institute.
Once known as Kincraig, the estate traces its origins to the 1890s and belonged to the Lauder Greenway family. (The Journal notes that Harriet Lauder Greenway’s father helped Andrew Carnegie launch the enterprise that later became U.S. Steel.)
The listing includes a French Renaissance-style mansion that runs some 13,500 square feet. The main house, recently restored and updated, has eight bedrooms and nine fireplaces. It also stands four stories tall — and the main rooms have ceilings 12 feet high. The living room, for its part, has French doors that head to a solarium with coffered ceilings.
Elsewhere on the grounds, there’s a gate house with three bedrooms, and a carriage house with two bedrooms and a clock tower. Even more splashy are the two private beaches and a private island on the Sound. (The children of the owners have paddled out there to spend nights camping.) Perks also include a 75-foot-long heated pool and spa.
The estate is split into two parcels, one with 20 acres and the other with 30. McElwreath, who’s representing the property with Joseph Barbieri along with Nikki Field in New York, told the outlet the property could be further divided into 10 or 12 lots — but she reckons it’s more likely to sell as single-family.
The reason for the departure? Field told the paper the owners’ kids have grown up and left.
“No one’s swimming in the 75-foot pool, no one’s paddling over to the private island,” she told the Journal. “They had their fun in it.”
Ex-Brit turned Manhattan resident since 2008.