Saturday, 27 April 2013
LOCATION: Watch Hill, RI
PRICE: $17,750,000
SIZE: 11,000+ square feet, 8 bedrooms and at least 10.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Just a couple quick months after she flipped a house on Cape Cod—the one next door to her old teen-aged boyfriend Conor Kennedy's famed family compound—famously real estate fickle country queen Taylor Swift has reportedly dropped $17.75 on an historic, 16-room mansion on 5.23 water front acres in the charming seaside village of Watch Hill, RI. So celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ breathlessly revealed, the 23 year old singer/songwriter paid for her new and exceptionally expensive real estate toy in cold hard cash. That's right. children. Beotch just wired the dough, so the story goes.
A little birdie we'll call Henry Hasthegoods slipped Your Mama some digital marketing materials via covert communique that shows the quintessentially East Coast seaside spread was designed by "an eminent Philadelphia architect" and built in 1930. The house, dubbed High Watch as per listing information, sits high and proud on a prominent rise where it lords over 700 feet of shoreline with uninterrupted views of Fishers Island Sound, Little Narragansett Bay, The Watch Hill Light House and a seven mile stretch of sandy beach. At 65 feet off the beach/water, listing details boldly states High Watch occupies what is "thought to be the highest point of direct waterfront land on the entire eastern seaboard, from Florida to Southern New England."
Marketing materials show the walled, gated and—no doubt—exuberantly secured ocean front estate was last listed for $24,000,000. A gated drive swoops up to a massive, parking lot-sized motor court in front of the house, a hulking Colonial style pile that measures more than 11,000 square feet spread out over four levels of living space. There are 8 bedrooms, at least 10.5 bathrooms, and a total of 8 fireplaces.
Multiple main floor reception rooms including (but not limited to) a 36-foot long parlor, a 45-foot long paneled sun room and an octagonal dining room with built in china cabinets. The over-sized kitchen has all the modern bells and whistles such as Sub-Zero fridge, warming drawer and wine cooler plus an adjoining sitting/family room with marble fireplace and sweeping views up and down the coastline.
There is, according to listing details, a guest/family bedroom with private bathroom on main floor. Four more guest/family bedrooms on the second floor each have en suite facilities and and expansive master suite is complete with two bathrooms, one for Miss Swift and another for her next boyfriend who may or may not wind up the subject of one of her future Top 40 country-pop songs.
In addition to a spacious sitting room with wet bar, fireplace and access to the widow's walk/roof terrace the top floor offers two more guest bedrooms, each a whopping 32-feet long and each equipped with attached bathroom, walk-in closet and private, water-side balcony.
The two lower levels include a vast recreation room with direct access to outdoor seaside entertainment areas, a service kitchen, a five car heated garage, a heated workshop and a discreet half bathroom for domestic and landscaping staff.
There are numerous balconies with serene water views, vast seaside terraces, and, set well below the house, a bra-shaped swimming pool (with uneven cup-sizes) and adjacent pool house/fitness room.
Little Miss Swift already owns a mini-compound tucked up into a quiet canyon in Beverly Hills, a bizarrely decorated duplex penthouse in downtown Nashville and, also in Nashville, a substantial mini-mansion in a swank gated enclave bought in mid-2011 for $2.5 million and where—we've been told but can't confirm—her parents live.
Property records reveal the Weston, Mass.-based sellers, James and Marlene Benson, are not famous—he's an insurance industry honcho who was the former CEO of John Hancock Life Insurance in the early- and mid-Aughts—but they're clearly quite rich and property records show they picked up the property way back in May 1996 for $3.5 million.
listing photos: Seaboard Properties
