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    Richard Gere Gets $10.75 Million for His Bucolic Connecticut Estate

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    Now that he’s announced a move to Spain to be closer to his publicist wife Alejandra Silva’s family in Madrid, Golden Globe-winning actor Richard Gere has unsurprisingly handed over the keys to the sprawling Connecticut estate he paid married musicians Paul Simon and Edie Brickell $10.8 million for a little more than two years ago, back in summer 2022.

    “For me, going to Madrid is going to be a great adventure because I have never lived full-time outside the United States,” the Pretty Woman star said in a recent Vanity Fair España article. “For Alejandra, it will be wonderful to be closer to her family, her lifelong friends, and her culture. She was very generous in giving me six years living in my world, so I think it is only fair that I give her at least another six living in hers.”

    As first reported by the New Canaan Advertiser, Gere and Silva have now offloaded their New Canaan residence to an LLC tied to James Hoffman of the general contracting and real estate development company SBP Homes, which picked up the nearly 32-acre spread in a clandestine deal in early October for $10.75 million.

    Built in the late 1930s and designed by architect Harold Reeve Sleeper, the rambling estate features a five-bedroom, nine-bath English country-style main house and a three-bedroom, two-bath guest cottage that Simon previously used as a recording studio. Outdoor amenities include a swimming pool, terraced patios, gardens, woodland trails, a natural pond, and a waterfall.

    RELATED: This $9.2 Million Mansion in Connecticut Has a Hidden Staircase to Your Bedroom

    Because the deal was done off-market, current photos are scarce. But on-line listings from a few years ago show the primary dwelling has an entry foyer with a winding staircase topped by a chandelier. From there, a spacious fireside living room is lined with built-in shelving and the kitchen is outfitted with an eat-in island, stainless appliances, and an accompanying breakfast nook. Other highlights include a wood-paneled study and an airy sunroom that doubles as an office space, plus an upstairs primary suite decked out with a wood-burning fireplace, a private balcony, and a cedar closet. There’s also an attached three-car garage on the premises.

    Before Gere and Silva purchased the home at a substantially reduced price, Simon and Brickell resided there for almost two decades, paying $16.5 million for the place in 2002. As for Gere, he reportedly had plans to convert part of the New Canaan property into a private, low-impact farm for growing mushrooms and providing honey, as well as raising goats.

    The Buddhist actor, who sold a two-bedroom apartment in a historic building in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park in 2022 for $3.15 million, has owned several other notable homes with celebrity connections. He transferred a waterfront compound in the Hamptons back in 2016 to Matt Lauer for a whopping $36.5 million, and in 2022 Ryan Murphy shelled out a bit more than $24 million for Gere’s 50-acre spread in New York’s rural Pound Ridge community. More

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      Designer Reed Krakoff Seeks $25.5 Million for the Connecticut Estate of a Reclusive Late Heiress

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      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.

      RELATED: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tirranna House in New Canaan Just Sold for $6 Million

      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

      RELATED: The Chic Connecticut Estate From ‘The Stepford Wives’ Could Now Be Yours for $7 Million

      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.

      James Gagliardi of Modern Media More