The Wall Street Journal - 02.08.2019

M4| Friday, August 2, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Montauk’s Seven Sisters, a

small collection of historic

homes dating back to the early

1880s, were designed by re-

nowned architecture firm Mc-

Kim Mead & White. While

they’ve passed through numer-

ous owners since, they still re-

tain the last names of their

original occupants. They in-

clude:

MANSION

Inside the

Seven Sisters

wife and collaborator Nan Bush,

Sandra Brant, wife of the late Van-

ity Fair editor and writer Ingrid

Sischy and Lyn Brillo, the es-

tranged wife of financier Mark Son-

nino, according to public records.

Mr. Weber and Ms. Brant didn’t re-

spond to requests for comment.

Mr. Schnabel declined to comment.

Public records link one home to

David Zander, a movie producer in

Los Angeles. Mr. Zander denied

owning the home, saying that the

actual owner is his nephew, who is

also named David Zander. The

younger Mr. Zander declined to

comment on the ownership status.

From one house, a viewer used

to be able to see the other six,

though the area has become more

forested in recent years. Ms. Brillo

said she’d have to climb to the

third floor of her property to get a

glimpse of most of the others.

The most famous home is

owned by television personality

Dick Cavett, and is locally known

as Cavett’s Cove or Tick Hall. (The

Tick Hall moniker was coined in

jest by onetime owner Harrison

Tweed, a prominent Wall Street

lawyer, for the prevalence of bugs

in the area.)

In a rarity, two of the houses

are for sale: Tick Hall is asking

$33.95 million, and is listed by

Gary DePersia of Corcoran as well

as the Burns team and Karen Kel-

ley of Compass. Mr. Zander’s

home is seeking $12.995 million,

listed by Mark Webb and Rylan

Jacka of Sotheby’s International

Realty. The most recent sale was

in 2012, when the Zander prop-

erty sold for $6.995 million; none

of the other homes have sold in 15

years, records show.

Yet despite their unusual prov-

enance—or maybe because of it—

these homes aren’t for everyone,

local agents said. Mr. Cavett’s

property was originally listed for

$62 million in 2017, and has un-

dergone several price cuts.

Historic district guidelines gov-

ern the changes that can be made

to these homes, some of which

were built with clapboard on the

first floors and cedar shingles

from the second floor to the ga-

bles. The guidelines mandate that

there can be no tennis courts built

on the properties; swimming

pools can only be located away

from the house, where they will

blend into the landscape.

Continued from page M1

Ranging in size from roughly

4,000 to 7,000 square feet, many of

these homes are too small by big-

money Hamptons standards and of-

ten can’t accommodate popular

modern amenities like massive en-

suite bathrooms, spas or elaborate

movie theaters. “It’s not like those

big houses in the Hamptons with

10 bedrooms,” said Martha Rogers

Cavett, Mr. Cavett’s wife. “The kind

of people who love the Seven Sis-

ters wouldn’t be happy in one of

those houses.”

“There is a certain sector of the

market that wants to live in a time-

stood-still kind of environment, but

those buyers are few and far be-

tween,” said local agent Tim Davis

of the Corcoran Group, who has

represented Mr. Cavett’s listing in

the past.

Then there is the upkeep. Own-

ers of these homes say they are

labors of love, demanding consid-

erable resources for renovations.

The house owned by the family

of HazeAnn Smith, a swimming

coach who bought the property

many decades ago, has fallen into

disrepair.

Son Todd Smith said his family

has struggled financially to afford

the maintenance; he remembered

bundling up around a fire in the

winter in the late-1970s, when the

house had no insulation. “You’re

only rich if you sell it, and we really

don’t want to sell it,” he said, add-

ing that since he works in construc-

tion, he’s done many of the repairs

himself. If he were to renovate the

property from top to bottom the

way he wanted to, it would cost up-

ward of $1.2 million, he said.

Mr. Cavett’s house is the only

one that is technically new. After

a 1997 fire completely destroyed

the home, Mr. Cavett’s first wife,

the late Carrie Nye, determined

that they would use what she

dubbed “forensic architecture” to

rebuild it exactly as before, down

to the same sagging porch and

the same squeaky window. “I just

couldn’t conceive of a world with-

out that house,” she said in a doc-

umentary made about the project,

“From The Ashes: The Life and

Times of Tick Hall.”

They examined the foundations,

old sketch drawings by a draper

who had made their curtains, old

photographs of birthday parties at

the house, pieces of the ruin and

their neighbors’ properties to piece

together the original house. They

even tracked down the same model

of the antique Regina music box

that had provided entertainment

before the fire. In the documen-

tary, Ms. Nye recalled playwright

Tennessee Williams dancing

through the house while the music

box played the waltz from Der

Rosenkavalier. The project was

completed in 2001. Ms. Cavett said

she didn’t know what her husband

paid for the house in 1968 or how

much it cost to rebuild.

On about 20 acres, the roughly

7,000-square-foot home sits on a

promontory with views over Mon-

tauk and 900 feet of private beach-

front. Through an ornate stained

glass window in the attic, viewers

can catch a glimpse of Eothen, the

roughly 5.7-acre estate once owned

by artist Andy Warhol. It sold for

$48.7 million in 2015, setting a re-

cord for Montauk.

Ms. Cavett said that she was

struck by the remoteness of the

property when she first visited.

When a “rough looking guy” came

to the back door and asked if she

had a sharp knife, she worried she

was handing him a murder

weapon. It turned out he was a

fisherman coming up from the

beach to deliver some of his catch.

“Therewereyearsofthe70s

where no one wore any clothes on

that beach,” Ms. Cavett laughed.

“Cavett said one time someone

called the police on him. Before

long they got the cops to take off

their clothes too.”

CHRIS FOSTER/CORCORAN GROUP (2)

THE ORIGINAL SEVEN

BIG DEALS

Montauk has seen an influx of

new inventory over the past

year. There were 182 active list-

ings on the market as of June,

up 27.3% for the same period

last year, according to Real-

tor.com. (News Corp., owner of

The Wall Street Journal, also

operates Realtor.com under li-

cense from the National Asso-

ciation of Realtors.) Compared

with the rest of the Hamptons,

notorious for sky high prices,

homes in Montauk are still sig-

nificantly less expensive. Here

are the three biggest sales

from the past five years.

1. $48.7 Million
   “Eothen”, the former Andy
   Warhol estate consisting of a
   small collection of white shin-
   gled cottages, sold in 2015 to
   Adam Lindemann, founder of
   art gallery Venus Over Manhat-
   tan.


2. $42 Million
   Anthony Casalena, the founder
   and chief executive of Square-
   space, bought three adjacent
   oceanfront parcels in 2018 and


3. The properties comprise
   two contemporary homes as
   well as a guest house.


4. $16 Million
   A home long owned by play-
   wright Edward Albee sold last
   year to fashion designer Ralph
   Lauren.

The Andrews House, which is owned by David Zander, a movie producer. On the National Register of Historic

Places, the homes are considered a prime example of McKim Mead & White’s use of Hamptons Shingle Style.

Orr House is owned by Dick Cavett. After it was destroyed in a 1997 fire, Mr. Cavett’s first wife, the late Carrie

Nye, rebuilt it down to a squeaky window. Photos of the rebuilt home; Ms. Nye and Mr. Cavett in 1971, right.

Seven

Sisters

AtlanticAtlaAtlanticAtlalnticntic

OceanOceaOceanOceaO nn

Long IslandLong IslLong IslLLonggIslIlandandandd

SoundSounSounSounddd

MONTAUK

NY

FOR SALE

$12.995 Million

FOR SALE

$33.95 Million

Benson House

Arthur Benson was president

of Brooklyn Gas Light Company

and developed the Bensonhurst

neighborhood in Brooklyn from

farmland. He purchased the

land and brought the owners

together.

DeForest House

Robert Weeks DeForest and

Henry DeForest were promi-

nent attorneys and brothers.

Robert DeForest, a civic leader,

was once president of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Orr House

Financier Alexander E. Orr was

president of the Board of Rapid

Transit Commissioners and

was influential in setting up

the financing and construction

of the New York subway sys-

tem.

Andrews House

William Loring Andrews served

as the first librarian for the

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He was a prominent collector

of rare books and a founding

member of the Grolier Club, a

private New York club for bib-

liophiles.

Sanger House

Henry Sanger was a business-

man.

Hoyt House

Alfred Hoyt was an investment

banker. He had his own firm,

A.M. Hoyt & Co.

Agnew House

Dr. Cornelius Agnew was a

noted surgeon who specialized

in diseases of the eye and ear.

Architects Charles Follen

McKim, William Rutherford

Mead and Stanford White.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

JASON LEE (MAP); SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY (4)

BRIAN BERKOWITZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; PETER ROSS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (CAVETT)

WALT DISNEY TELEVISION/GETTY IMAGES

wsj_20190802_m004_p2jw214000_0_m00400_1________xa2019.crop.pdf 1 02-Aug-19 06:08:56