Designer Reed Krakoff Seeks $25.5 Million for the Connecticut Estate of a Reclusive Late Heiress
A 52-acre estate in New Canaan, Connecticut, with the tongue-in-cheek name of Le Beau Chateau and previously owned for more than 60 years by the late and reclusive copper-mining heiress Huguette Clark, has been listed for $25.5 million. Rob Johnson and Mary Higgins of Brown Harris Stevens hold the listing.
Though she was free to leave at any time, for two decades before her 2011 death at the age of 104, Clark lived quietly and simply at a reported cost of more than $800 a day in a Manhattan hospital room overlooking Central Park. During her long life, the doll collector and painter amassed a portfolio of rarely- and never-used homes that included a trio of sprawling co-operative apartments in the same aristocratic building on New York’s Fifth Avenue, a grand Italianate villa overlooking the ocean in Santa Barbara, and Le Beau Chateau, which she bought in 1951 as a potential refuge from a nuclear attack during the Cold War but, curiously enough, never spent a single night in.
The Manhattan apartments were sold off shortly after she died for a combined $55 million, and the Santa Barbara mansion, known as Bellosguardo, which she had not visited in half a century, was bequeathed to a foundation that now offers limited docent tours.
Geometric artworks add contemporary flair to the dining room’s period fireplace.
James Gagliardi of Modern Media
Clark’s unoccupied but always maintained Connecticut spread, which she had unsuccessfully attempted to sell a couple of times in the years before her death, was acquired in 2014 for $14 million—a steep discount from the original asking price of $34 million—by veteran fashion designer and tastemaker Reed Krakoff and interior designer Delphine Krakoff. The design- and architecture-savvy couple subsequently oversaw a respectful restoration and careful update that included the seamless integration of modern conveniences and luxuries.
A long drive passes between a pair of modest cottages—a two-bedroom caretaker’s residence and a 1,300-square-foot exercise pavilion—and weaves across the property before arriving at a large motor court at the front of the 21-room French-style manor house that was originally built in 1937. Across the nearly 15,000-square-foot mansion’s three floors are nine bedrooms and 10 bathrooms, plus four additional powder rooms. Three of the 11 original fireplaces are still functional.
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The Krakoffs opted for a neutral color palette of creams and beiges, with plush fabrics and art-friendly cotton-white walls that keep things light and bright. Antique chevron-patterned wood floors are underfoot throughout much of the main floor public rooms, as well as in many of the upper-floor bedrooms. Other highlights include a sweeping circular staircase, a vast living room alongside an equally spacious library, and a formal dining room jazzed up with a thoroughly modern, mold-like Cloud sculpture of interchangeable fabric tiles by French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.
The spacious primary bath showcases antique statuary, Louis VX-style chairs and a Lucite vanity.
James Gagliardi of Modern Media
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To one side of the house is a formal garden, and at the rear, a vast lawn rolls down toward a simple rectangular pool hemmed in by a clipped hedgerow. A reconditioned tennis court is set in a sunny clearing near the estate’s gated entrance, while dense woodlands ensure complete privacy from neighboring estates.
The Krakoffs, who maintain a Parisian hôtel particulier, have bought and sold a hefty number of other noteworthy homes on the East Coast. They sold a Manhattan townhouse in 2007 to Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, and in 2014 they sold an even more grand Big Apple townhouse for a staggering $51 million. And in the Hamptons, they once owned Lasata, the childhood summer residence of Jackie Kennedy. (It is now owned by fashion designer and filmmaker Tom Ford.) The couple has since custom built a striking new home in the Hamptons, a series of ultra-modern bunker-like glass and concrete pavilions overlooking the sandy dunes in Amagansett.
Click here for more photos of the New Canaan estate.
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