connecticut

Looking for a high octane holiday gift idea? If you buy a very lucky someone a new Mercedes-Benz AMG vehicle for Christmas, they'll now get a free pass to the amazing AMG Driving Academy that we wrote about last year. If that's out of your price range you might still be able to afford them an adrenaline rush with a gift certificate to the thrilling course. In three skill levels, AMG Driving Academy provides race-tested instructors who teach drivers to train and use their reflexes for maximum driving excitement and performance on closed-off circuits. Drivers can bring their own cars, use the standard school cars or upgrade to the gull-wing SLS AMG supercar (above).

To purchase a gift certificate, visit www.AMGacademy.com/drive, select the Basic or Pro Class at the desired venue, and register the recipient. Pricing starts at $1,595. For 2011 the Academy is also adding Lime Rock Park in Connecticut as the third track in its impressive U.S. stable; the other two venues are Laguna Seca and Road Atlana. As an added bonus if you register before Jan. 15 you'll get a 20% discount.

Twenty-eight of Connecticut's most entrancing private landscapes are featured in a beautiful new book from Monacelli Press. Private Gardens of Connecticut offers a privileged glimpse at the personal oases at the estates of designer Oscar de la Renta, socialite Anne Bass, decorator Bunny Williams and many more. Included are gardens from all across the state, from Greenwich to New Canaan and the coast, many of which have never been professionally photographed. A variety of styles is represented from formal to small, contemporary, wild, and old fashioned. Some, like de la Renta's (on the cover above) are grand in scale and tended by an army of skilled professionals, others modest and easily kept, but all alluring and extremely enviable. Throughout the oversized volume author Jane Garmey recounts the story of the creation of the leafy retreats while John Hall's lavish photographs of sumptuous flowers and luxuriant foliage make them leap off the page.

In August we learned that Leona Helmsley's former home, Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut might finally be sold. Now the Greenwich Time gives us a sold price and it's even lower than had been anticipated. This home hit the market in 2008 for $125 million. Price cut after price cut followed until it hit $60 million. The Greenwich Time says that the home has been sold for $35 million, a full $90 million discount. The buyer is listed as a trustee, Cynthia L. Smith of the Greenwich law firm Whitman, Breed, Abbott & Morgan LLP. Jane Basham of David Ogilvy & Associates was the selling agent.

The traditional brick mansion is approximately 23,0000 square feet with seven upstairs bedroom suites, a glass-walled music room, a wood- paneled library with a 15th century fireplace mantel, formal dining room, family room with a bar and much more. The back wing is home to the staff area which has six bedrooms. The indoor pool has four exposures and includes areas for sitting and changing. There is also a 75-foot outdoor pool with a terrace and a cabana with a kitchen. There are also brick cottages with an additional six bedrooms total. The Helmsleys bought Dunnellen Hall in 1983 for $9 million (paying an extra $2 million for the furniture) and later picked up another 14 acres bringing the total to 40 acres. We've heard from those who have visited the home that it is in a state of disrepair and will cost millions to fix. The sale will be a boon for the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, which supports health care and medical research.

The home is just the latest in Greenwich in a year that has seen Tommy Hilfiger pick up a new home for $31.375 million and Mel Gibson's Old Mill Farm sell for almost $24 million. The top of the market is now the Point of View estate listed at $42 million.

Boast, the iconic, exclusive polo shirt brand founded in 1973 by Bill St. John, the tennis pro at Greenwich, Connecticut's famed Field Club, is being relaunched this month with a modern spin. Boast polos, featuring the notorious Japanese Maple leaf logo which many assumed to be a pot leaf, were originally sold only by Saint John from the back of his station wagon at country clubs across the Northeast. He designed the shirts in homage to the rebellious tennis stars of the day like John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, the intentional pot leaf confusion adding a subversive touch.

Now John Dowling and Alexander Tiger, major racquet sports devotees and longtime fans of Boast, have revived the brand and updated the fabric and fit of the shirts, and are making them available outside country club pro shops for the first time. Dowling and Tiger have brought in Jack Spade designer Andy Spade's creative studio Partners & Spade to help breathe new life into the brand. The super soft and durable Boast pique cotton polo, offered in a range of colors in a classic fit, is now available for $68 via BoastUSA.com. There's also a beautifully hand-tailored navy blazer with eye-catching details for $1,200.

Rockmeadow is a classic estate in Fairfield, Connecticut. The estate was once owned by legendary American composer Richard Rodgers. The Cameron Clark-designed Colonial sits on 21 acres on manicured green lawns overlooking a spring-fed pond. The property includes a gunite pool, har-tru tennis court, guest house with caretakers cottage and greenhouse.Clark built the home in 1929, and over the years it has been expanded and renovated to include three stories with six bedrooms, large open kitchen and a library with cherry paneling. For the most part the home still reflects classic New England style with only a few glaringly modern touches like the updated kitchen and a modern bathroom with a separate walk-in shower. A few years ago it was listed at $12.95 million but is now listed at $8.35 million.

The star car at this year's Fairfield Concours d'Elegance will wears the Spirit of Ecstasy on her hood and no less ecstatic design all along her body. The 1939/47 Rolls-Royce Phantom III "Vutotal" Cabriolet by Labourdette, now in the John Rich Museum collection, started off as a standard Phantom III designed by Henry Royce. It was re-envisioned by coachbuilder Hooper and Co. in 1938 with a Sedanca de Ville for the chassis, then showed off in Europe before being tweaked for the U.S. market.

When that show car ended up in the Parisian studio of Henri Labourdette in the forties, he threw out everything but the running gear and rebodied the car gold-plating-and-brass-adorned aerodynamic bodywork that swooped back into a boattail. He also got rid of anything that identified it as a Rolls, save for its mascot and a couple of interior trim pieces. The final detail: the Vutotal windscreen, a thick slice of glass that appears to support itself. The conversion cost $44,000 at a time when the average price of a home was about $4,000.

Elsewhere on the Concours docket, featured judging classes will include Porsche, Bugatti, Period Hot Rods and Custom Cars from 1948 – 1964, there'll be regional vintage club gatherings, an auction conducted by Bonhams, and photographer Jesse Alexander will be the featured artist. The Barn Find category is a new one this year and is still accepting submissions to go with dusty, rusted hulks including the 1949 Willys Panel Wagon and 1961 AC Greyhound. The seventh annual Fairfield Concours opens its lawn on Saturday, September 11, 2010.

Back in April we learned that Mel Gibson had sold Old Mill Farm, his 75-acre Greenwich estate. Now the Greenwich Time has news on the price. The home sold for nearly $24 million after spending three years on the market. We first saw this property hit the market in 2007 for $39.5 million. At the sale time the listing price had been carved down to $29.75 million. He bought the property in 1994 for $9.3 million.

According to town records the new buyer is Cosette Property LLC. No information is available on the company but this could be a trust for a buyer who wants to remain hidden. The paper says that the highest-priced residential transaction this year in Greenwich was the $31.4 million sale of a mansion on 22 acres at 30 John St., bought by a company that lists Tommy Hilfiger as its principal. That property was our estate of the day back in April and was listed for $33 million. Hilfiger sold another Greenwich home last fall for $20 million. That one was listed at $27.9 million when it was our estate of the day back in 2008.

Old Mill Farm is a design by architect Charles Lewis Bowman built in 1926 for his horse-loving client, G.L. Ohrstrom. The home is one of the last great manor homes in Greenwich and is significant not just for the architecture but for the fact that it has 77 acres of land. The home itself is an Elizabethan-inspired Tudor mansion of 15,800 square feet and the property has 15 bedrooms and 18 bathrooms total. The jaw-dropping room of the place is the great hall which has a 40-foot cathedral ceiling with a stone minstrel's gallery, walk-in fireplace and leaded glass ceilings. The grounds, which were done by landscape designer James Doyle, include formal gardens and a maze. There is also a terrace pool, tennis court, greenhouse, stable, staff houses, log cabin and a pond on the property.

Gibson's Lavender Hill Farm in Malibu remains on the market at $14.5 million.

In bucolic Greenwich, Connecticut, attractive women, meticulously restored estates, and top wines miraculously improve with age.

Japanese-born beauty Sachiko Goodman, the legendary real estate agent, and her husband, Lawrence, a retired businessman and philanthropist, opened Hickory Hill, their storied estate in the Belle Haven section of Greenwich, Connecticut, for the Annual Bruce Museum Patron Party on Thursday, May 20. The event toasted the Renaissance ball benefiting the Bruce Museum, which takes place on June 5 this year and is generally considered a centerpiece of the Greenwich social swim.

On a pillared terrace, an exacting chef assisted by a woman in traditional Japanese dress fills boats with fresh sushi. Past the kitchen and down a thin, modernist corridor, in an open white space, hang multiple Warhol images of Sachiko Goodman. "They were my birthday present when I was 30 years old," says Mrs. Goodman, wearing a white Givenchy safari dress and appearing equally as fresh as in the renderings on the wall. "But I was never pleased with the way my face looked, so I never really wanted to display them until just recently."

Goodman describes her dear, now late friend, Andy Warhol, who would become so very famous. "I just loved him as a person," she says. "He was a very shy guy, a little weird but very nice. He was very good to my daughter. Every time he visited me, in this house or my previous home in Greenwich, he always brought sweet gifts."

And did Warhol take Polaroid images of her to create the portraits? "I have hundreds of them," answers Goodman. "I keep them in an album. Now that I'm older, possibly more mature, I appreciate that I'm very, very lucky to have these things."

A historic home and hundreds on antiques are up for sale in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 5 in one amazing sale. A circa 1830 Greek Revival-style home known locally as the Historic Trowbridge-Thoms House belonged to longtime antiques dealer Thomas McBride who did business in the property's adjacent red barn. At 81 he decided to retire finally parting with items he took a lifetime to collect. Around 1,000 antique items will be auctioned off.

The real estate broker for the home property is Mary Helen Levine of Litchfield Real Estate Auctions, LLC, of Litchfield and the contents of the barn/antique shop and home will be auctioned by Tim Chapulis of Tim's, Inc. "Anyone attending this auction will be stepping back in time. This is what you would have come upon if you had been on the antique trail in the 1950s or '60s," said Chapulis in a press release.

Condo auctions, you know I love them. The latest takes us to Norwalk, Connecticut and a former hat factory that has been converted into residential condos. Nine units at Clocktower Close will be up for auction on Saturday, April 17 through Sheldon Good & Company. Four of the studio and one-bedroom condos offered will be sold subject to low minimum bids of $99,000 to $150,000 (they were originally priced from $155,000 to $350,000). The two-bedroom unit has a reserve price.

The Clocktower building is a classic example of brick New England mill architecture popular during the late 19th century. Many of these mills and factories in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island have now been converted into condos. This building has a place on the National Register of Historic Places. The residences have large windows and lofted ceilings up to 20'+ with exposed brick walls and timber-beamed ceilings. The building includes a fitness center with sauna, billiard and media room.

[via News Times]

A classic Connecticut Colonial house gets a gorgeous renovation in today's estate of the day. Mount Archer Farm in Lyme, Connecticut has a historic colonial home, barn, pool house on more than 46 acres that including riding trails and a spring-fed pond. The main house has heavy beamed ceilings, wide-planked floors and stone fireplaces turned black with use. A renovation has given it a modern kitchen and a master wing with his and hers bathrooms. The guest wing has four bedrooms and there is also a media room and an exercise studio. The outdoors includes a gunite pool,15-stall barn and a riding ring. This one is listed at $4.2 million.

If today's estate doesn't look like a retired football player's house that's because Peter Gogolak gave up the football game a while ago (he was a kicker for the New York Giants and the Buffalo Bills in the 1960s and 1970s) and focused on the home renovation business. The Wall Street Journal's Private Properties reports that Gogolak and his wife Kathy buy, renovate and then sell homes in Connecticut. This five-bedroom home in Darien, Connecticut is their 11th. They bought it in 2005 for $3 million and spent eight months restoring it. The 1920s Colonial has a lovely location on a hillside with just under two acres of gardens, stone walls and lawns. The property includes a pool with a waterfall. The interior is classic Connecticut with a formal living room, hardwood floors, French doors, and a large kitchen with an adjacent family room with fireplace. This home is listed at $5.5 million.

Christie's tried in New York with a 1983 piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat and didn't succeed. The auction house may have been too aggressive in estimating the 16-foot piece at $9 million. That's what's tough about the art market right now. There are signs of recovery, and it can be tempting to push for higher prices. Unfortunately, it's easy to get a bit excited. The painting had the highest estimate at the auction. The piece with the second highest presale estimate, a piece by Andy Warhol, met a similar fate.

The Basquiat piece, "Brother Sausage," was offered anonymously by a buyer later revealed by Bloomberg News to be Peter Brant, an art collector based in Connecticut. The piece may be a casualty of his divorce from model Stephanie Seymour. Well, it won't be financing post-marital discord and could remain a contested asset for a while.

Warhol's "Tunafish Disaster" was projected to move for up to $8 million and, like the Basquiat painting, didn't receive any bids. Art dealer Robert Mnuchin of L&M Arts was stuck taking it home.

Yet, some works beat the odds in an auction that raked in $74.2 million, within the presale range of $61.5 million to $88 million. Nonetheless, this was the lowest result we've seen from a Christie's New York contemporary art effort since May 2003 and down 81 percent from the top of the market two and a half years ago.

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.

Today's estate of the day is a New Canaan, Ct. home on 6.43 acres that was built for entertaining. It is the ultimate family compound with a guest cottage, swimming pool, a pond stocked with trout and a one-of-a-kind sports pavilion.

The main house, which was built in 1983, is 9,244 square feet with five fireplaces, interior stone walls, rustic wood beams, seven bedrooms, 6 full baths and 2 half baths. The kitchen was remodeled in 2005 and has alder-wood cabinetry, French antique limestone floors and a hand-carved limestone sink. There's a two-story family room with a cathedral ceiling, wide-plank white oak floors and a wall of Tischler windows, setting the ease and comfort for family gatherings. The two-story foyer has a circular staircase and there are two adjacent living rooms, one with a window wall and the other with sliding glass doors leading to a deck, each overlooking the glorious pond and swimming pool setting. The main-level master bedroom suite has a corner fireplace, a wall of French doors opening to a deck, and luxurious his and her whirlpool baths. Additional features include a library with separate office and bath, game room and exercise room.

The 10,600 square feet three-level sports pavilion is the ultimate entertainment facility. Winner of a prestigious award for excellence in design and construction in 2005, the pavilion offers a French country kitchen and dining area that seats 30, all overlooking a NBA-level half basketball court with regulation scoreboard. There's also a stage replete with dark maroon velvet curtain and Broadway-level lighting and sound system. The dance studio has a ballet bar and mirrored walls. The fairy-tale setting continues downstairs with a state-of-the-art golf simulator room where you can choose to play one of 50 different courses around the world, including St. Andrews and Pebble Beach. There's also a movie theater with over-sized leather seats for 25; a bowling alley, and a game room that features billiards, pinball and a milk shake bar. The three levels of the "sports barn" are linked via an elevator and a circular log stairway hand-made in Colorado. There's a TV lounge setting on all three levels, and on the third level, there are three bedrooms and three baths.

The property has a trout pond with two waterfalls and a heated pool complete with a pool spa. The pool house features a sauna, two changing rooms, two showers and a bathroom. There's also a cabana with a state-of-the-art kitchen, bar, stone fireplace, Viking grill, wood-beam ceiling and seating for 25. The garage, which is within the sports pavilion, includes a catering kitchen with an extra-large refrigerator and sink. There is also a charming guest cottage with a living room, fireplace, kitchenette, bedroom and full bath.

The house is listed at $12,500,000.

For more information, contact the listing agent, Barbara Cleary of Barbara Cleary's Realty Guild at (203) 966-7772.