Mansions

Real Estate Guru Has High hopes For Greenwich Digs

Filed under: Estates

Starwood Hotels & Resorts veteran Barry Sternlicht is looking for real estate to surge in Greenwich, Connecticut. The wealthy New York City suburb got spanked over the past year as the city's financial industry gurus saw their bonuses jobs disappear and flooded the market with ostentatious homes on the market at a time when buyers were few and far between. A year later, Sternlicht thinks this town is ready to stage a comeback.

Sternlicht just raised the asking price on his 5.8 acre estate in Greenwich to $5.95 million, even though the local market is about to finish its worst year in the past 30. Jean Ruggiero, Sternlicht's real estate broker, said he pushed up the asking price because "we felt like we were giving it away." People showed some interest in the home, and the fact that other sellers were cutting prices didn't mean that Sternlicht had to follow. "Just because people are lowering their price doesn't mean it's right, because he's not a desperate seller, "Ruggiero said of Sternlicht.

The new number is 8.3 percent higher than the $5.495 million Sternlicht previously asked, even though prices for single-family homes in Greenwhich dropped 40 percent year-to-date.

Originally, the home was put on the market at $8.25 million in June 2008, and it was cut three times from September 2008 to April 2009. It boasts a tennis and shuffleboard court, pool and guest house ... and is of course gated.

Even at $5.95 million, Sternlicht will come out ahead. He bought the place in November 1994 for a mere $2.93 million.

Gallery: Barry Sternlicht in Greenwich

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Tags: barry sternlicht, BarrySternlicht, connecticut, greenwich, greenwich connecticut, GreenwichConnecticut, luxury real estate, LuxuryRealEstate, mansion, mansions, real estate, RealEstate

Near The Charente River, Estate of the Day

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

The listing on this beautiful mansion near Cognac in France, promises that the "carps, ducks and swans enjoy a peaceful life" on the property. I daresay the owners might too. This stunner of a mansion dates back to 1880 and is set in five acres of parkland adjacent to the river Charente. The grounds include outbuildings, a swimming pool, stone pond and a canal. Half of the property is a park surrounded by stone walls and with wrought iron gates. The park features trees and hedges and a pair of bridges lead to the vegetable garden.

The house's facade with is moldings, carvings and balcony offers the kind of classic French style that has spawned thousands of imitations around the world. Inside, the home has many of its original features like oak flooring, marble fireplaces, beveled glass doors and mosaic flooring in the entrance hall. There are seven bedrooms total. Under the house there is storage and a large wine cellar. This home is listed at 1,750,000 euros.

Experience more lush living in luxury homes and mansions or see the stars living large with celebrity homes galleries at AOL Real Estate.

Gallery: Charente River

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Tags: charente, cognac, estate of the day, EstateOfTheDay, france, mansions

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The Classicist: The Best of Luxe Books

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Decor, Estates, Yachts & Sailing, Books, The Classicist, Wealth

For your reading and viewing pleasure we present the second in a series looking back at highlights from the first year of The Classicist, the weekly column devoted to timeless style, enduring elegance, and true, built-to-last luxury as opposed to mere extravagance. For our second installment we sum up the best in luxe books, featuring our favorite subjects ranging from high equestrian style to classic architecture, historic estates, high society, jetsetters, megayachts and more. No truly luxurious library is complete without these volumes.

Gallery: Best of the Best: Books 2009

1. Equestrian Style: Home Design, Couture, and Collections from the Eclectic to the Elegant by Vicky Moon (Clarkson Potter)

Moon divides her volume into different facts of the equestrian experience: In the Field, On the Farm, At the Track, In the Ring, On the Move, and Down the Road, focusing on all facets of horsiness and everything that goes along with it. The emphasis is on authenticity, not affectation; she notes all that's really required is a "basic love of horses" but opines that actually riding them gives one a much stronger connection. True equestrian style, she writes, is "more than a feisty, wet Jack Russell terrier, a pair of Wellington boots and a tweed jacket. It goes beyond hanging a hunting print in the dining room wall to actually leaping over a stone wall on your favorite hunter. An unspoken equestrian philosophy surpasses wearing an Hermes scarf; it celebrates riding over jumps in an Hermes saddle."

Gallery: Equestrian Style

Racing tropy from Bonhams Sporting Sale.

2. The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills by Jeffrey Hyland (Rizzoli)

A meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated history of 50 magnificent estates in three world-famous enclaves of the ultra-wealthy - Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, and Holmby Hills - this is a definitive history of the area's most famous estates, "the architecturally spectacular homes and lavish grounds that have been home to countless celebrities and the world's richest families for almost a century." Aside from the purely visual pleasure of the photographs both old and new, Hyland explains the history and architectural importance of each estate, and tells the fascinating stories of the many famed owners, from their "passionate involvement in the design of these costly properties, to their intrigues, triumphs, calamities, and romances."

Gallery: Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills

3. Great Estates: The Lifestyles & Homes of American Magnates by William G. Scheller (Universe)

This oversized, lavishly illustrated volume celebrates the history of 40 of America's true barons of business, from the 1700s through this year's Forbes list, and opens the door into their private palaces along the way. Great Estates follows the "restless careers of our most brilliant and driven merchants, industrialists, and financiers as they mastered a new economic world of textiles, railroads, oil, and steel." Men of great fortune erected massive monuments to their success, inclduing Henry Clay Frick's Manhattan mansion, now a magnificent museum; William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon in California, aka Hearst Castle; and one of our personal favorites, railroad magnate Jay Gould's gothic castle on the Hudson River, Lyndhurst and more.

Gallery: Magnates' Great Estates

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (former Carnegie Mansion)

4. Luxury Toys: Mega Yachts from teNeues

In the rarefied world of mega yachts, the ultimate achievement is to have one designed by a certain Norwegian genius named Espen Oeino. The world's top star in naval architecture, Oeino's megabucks creations "combine the precision of fine machinery with indulgent finishes and the high-end amenities of a palace." When German luxury publisher teNeues opted to focus a volume in its amazing Luxury Toys series to the world's greatest yachts, it was quickly decided to dedicated the entire book to Oeino. The book showcases 20 of his stellar creations, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's 413-ft. Octopus, the 8th largest yacht in the world and the second largest superyacht that is not owned by a head of state.

Gallery: Luxury Toys: Mega Yachts

Continued after the jump.

Tags: architecture, Assouline, Beverly Hills, BeverlyHills, equestrian, high society, HighSociety, library, mansions, megayachts, Rizzoli, San Simeon, SanSimeon, Stanford White, StanfordWhite, teNeues, yacht

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New England's Great Estates

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Decor, Estates, Books

Three centuries worth of New England's magnificent houses and mansions are collected in an equally grand new book from Rizzoli: Great Houses of New England, by Roderic H. Blackburn (text) and Geoffrey Gross (photography). Spanning a wide range of styles, these stately houses are the originals from which many of today's McMansions have been copied. They're more than just artifacts, however; as Blackburn writes, "Through the architecture and decorative arts we see the development of a people and their region."

Among the more splendid examples in the book is the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, Mass., dating from 1767 (pictured here), the impressiveness of which is "conveyed by its subdued monumentality," Blackburn notes. Lee, a shipping merchant, built it to emulate aristocratic estates in England, so you might say not all that much has changed. Also of note are the beautiful brick Georgian Macpheadris-Warner House in Portsmouth, N.H., dating from 1716; Rosecliff, a palatial McKim, Mead & White mansion which was the setting for the movie version of The Great Gasby; and Brookside, a gracious Greek Revival in Orwell, VT. See the gallery for more.

Gallery: Great Houses of New England

Brookside, the Wilcox-Cutts House, Orwell, Vermont.

Macpheadris-Warner House, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Tags: Georgian, Great estates, GreatEstates, Greek Revival, GreekRevival, Historic houses, HistoricHouses, Mansions, Marblehead, McKim, Mead White, New England, NewEngland, Newport, Portsmouth, Rizzoli, Rosecliff, The Great Gatsby, TheGreatGatsby

Chinqua-Penn Plantation, Estate of the Day

by Matthew Collins (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

Not far from where I grew up in North Carolina was an extravagant old house named Chinqua-Penn that was periodically open to the public. Inside, treasures from the former owner's world travels lined the halls and rooms. It was a mansion built with tobacco money in the roaring twenties and at 31,000 square feet, was far from cramped. Located in Reidsville, 20 miles north of Greensboro, Chinqua-Penn is set amid the rolling farmland of North Carolina's Piedmont region. The house had been given to the University of North Carolina and it opened the house to the public. Budgetary constraints caused the house to be closed in 2002 and now the University is selling the house to fund scholarships. The house is an eclectic mish-mash of styles and sits on 23 acres of landscaped gardens. Of the numerous notable features is the Chinese Pagoda pool house and the clock tower with chimes. The house is being offered either with or without the massive collection of furniture and art that tacks an extra $2 million onto the asking price. Don't let this fantastic home fall into evil hands!

More Pictures after the Jump!

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Tags: chinqua-penn, houses, mansions, north carolina, NorthCarolina

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