‘The Sound of Music’ Composer Richard Rodgers Was the Original Owner of This $15 Million Connecticut Estate

The owners of Richard Rodgers’s former estate are saying “So Long, Farewell” to the Fairfield, Connecticut, abode. The legendary composer behind a slew of enduring Broadway musicals that include The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, and Carousel lived there from 1965 until his death in 1979, and during his tenure he was known to host other show business luminaries like Leonard Bernstein and Ethel Merman. 

The current owners updated the residence quite a bit, bulking up the main house and expanding the property to almost 40 acres in total. Leslie Razook and Cyd Hamer at William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty hold the $15 million listing.

The main residence, a collection of mansard-roofed pavilions, was originally a midcentury-modern delight but has been altered to become more squarely modern with seven bedrooms and seven baths in more than 9,000 square feet. A Sputnik-style chandelier and a white-veined black marble fireplace jazz up the former living room, while the formal dining room is wrapped in mirror-like black lacquer, and two blue refrigerators brighten up the grayscale chef’s kitchen. In the primary suite, a private study has a funky, Tetris-like geometric patterned ceiling, and the bathroom is swathed in printed black-and-white wallpaper. Additional indoor amenities include a library and a fireside den, as well as a hidden theater and a Moroccan bar and lounge.

The pool is accompanied by a barn-style pool house that contains a full kitchen and bathroom, plus a gym on the second floor. And on the other side of the property sits a paddle tennis court that is heated for wintertime play. A two-level office pavilion is found in another private garden, and an updated stone gatehouse can serve as lodging for guests or staff. Adding to its sense of privacy and connection to nature, the estate abuts a 155-acre nature preserve.

Rodgers’s onetime home is among the most expensive listings currently available in Connecticut outside of the famously spendy town of Greenwich. That’s only befitting of the former home of the composer, who was the first-ever EGOT winner and whose name graces the Broadway theater where Hamilton is currently playing. And, as a Connecticut resident, Rodgers was in good company: The playwright Noël Coward owned a stately residence nearby, which hit the market for $10.3 million earlier this year and where Rodgers was known to pop by from time to time.

And while Fairfield perhaps isn’t as well known as Greenwich, the town is home to a number of notable abodes: in just one example, a mansion modeled on the Vanderbilt family’s Vermont farm popped up for sale a few years ago for $7 million.

Click here to see all the images of Richard Rodgers’s onetime Connecticut home.

Source: Luxury - robbreport.com