Owned by timber mogul John Rudey for 31 years, the property is stocked with a 12-bedroom mansion, a whopping 4,000—yes, four thousand—feet of water frontage, and not one, but two offshore islands.
Rudey originally told the Wall Street Journal that he was selling the spread because his kids had grown, but that may have been only half of the truth. According to a followup piece in the New York Times, Rudey’s timber holdings have been decimated by transportation issues, endangered species conservation, water limitations, and the spruce budworm, a tree-burrowing insect. These setbacks might not have affected the Copper Beech Farm property at all had Rudey not used the sprawling waterfront estate as collateral on a series of huge loans.
At one point, according to the Times, the debt attached to the property totaled a whopping $203 million. After the 2006 collapse of one of Rudey’s timber holding companies, the banks came calling. In 2011, Bank of America began foreclosure proceedings on a portion of Copper Beech Farm. The bank later backed off, but Rudey may have been forced to sell off much of his remaining timber holdings, and his $16.5 million Fifth Avenue apartment, to keep creditors at bay.
But back to the blockbuster home at hand: The manor dates back to the 1890s and was once owned by the Lauder Greenway family, which made its fortune helping Andrew Carnegie start up his steel business. Other details: the living space measures 15,000 square feet and includes a dining room with a tracery ceiling, as well as a “huge solarium with a coffered ceiling with plaster detailing and three exposures,” according to the listing. Also on the property: formal gardens, a grass tennis court, two greenhouses, an apple orchard, a 75-foot-long heated pool, and a 1,800-foot-long driveway. (Keep clicking for pictures of those — they start at slide 15.)
tennis court, two greenhouses, an apple orchard, a 75-foot-long heated pool, and a 1,800-foot-long driveway. (Keep clicking for pictures of those — they start at slide 15.)
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Even at its new, uh, bargain-basement ask, Copper Beech Farm is still the most expensive private mansion on the market in the United States. Next in line is the Crespi-Hicks Estate, a Dallas spread listed for $135 million by business honcho Tom Hicks. (Click here for details and pictures of that estate.)If Copper Beech Farm sells at ask, it will top America’s biggest-ever home sale — a Silicon Valley spread that sold in January for $117.5 million — by $22.5 million.Even at the beginning, listing agent David Ogilvy admitted to the Journal that pricing is a bit of a guessing game with properties this valuable—and it’s true, there’s ample evidence that many nine-figure places endure harsh price chops. (Some, meanwhile, just push peas around the plate waiting for a buyer to match their demands.) Take the old Versace in Miami, which hit the market at $125 million, fell to $100 million, then $75 million, and finally sold at auction this week for—ouch—$41M.Though Copper Beech Farm has going for it a certain lack of 24-karat-gold-encrusted mosaics and six-person gilded showers, nonetheless it must be conceded that no publicly listed Greenwich property has ever achieved more than $45 million.
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