The Turtle Bay townhouse where late actress Katharine Hepburn lived for decades is looking for a taker.
The four-bedroom property at 244 E. 49th St., between Second and Third Avenues, is asking $7.2 million, according to an ad that appeared this month. The 19-foot-wide home has six fireplaces, an eat-in kitchen and a wine cellar, plus access through its backyard to a shared garden running almost the entire length of its block.
The garden is the central feature of the 20-building Turtle Bay Gardens historic district, a designation approved in the mid-1960s and one of the city’s first stabs at landmarking.
In 2004, owner Astoria Property Group, which is linked to a family from Mexico, bought the four-story property for $3.9 million from Hepburn’s estate, according to the city register. Hepburn, who died in 2003, had purchased the 4,600-square-foot home in 1931 and kept it as her New York City residence for most of her long and celebrated Hollywood career.
Regionally, the Connecticut-born and -raised Hepburn also owned a beachfront retreat on Long Island Sound in the town of Old Saybrook.
Functioning as a pied-a-terre for the owners when in New York but also occasionally offered as a rental, No. 244 is currently styled with a bit of a mid-century vibe, though there’s not a lot that has survived from Hepburn’s long run at the address. An exception is a mirrored vanity that she had installed in the third floor’s primary suite.
But the paintings on the walls, which are available for purchase, are reproductions of works from Hepburn’s personal collection, including some self-portraits, according to Lisa Larson, the Sotheby’s agent who is marketing the property.
Larson added that the owners are selling the property now because they are visiting New York less than before.
Turtle Bay Gardens, a low-slung and leafy counterpoint to the nearby Midtown office-tower district, has drawn actors, authors and musicians through the years. Bob Dylan once lived next-door to Hepburn at No. 242. And Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim owned the property on the other side, No. 246, from 1960 till his death in 2021. The seven-bedroom Sondheim townhouse went into contract last year just a few weeks after coming to market for $7 million and sold for its full asking price, records show.
Other well-known residents of the block have included children’s book author and longtime New Yorker scribe E. B. White, who lived at 229 East 48th Street in the 1950s. In an essay White wrote about packing up the Turtle Bay house to prepare for a move to Maine, he waxed nostalgic about his verdant back yard, recalling “the wolf whistle of the starling; the summer-night murmur of the fountain; the cat, the vine, the sky, the willow.”
A regular silver-screen presence from the 1920s to 1990s, Hepburn earned 12 Academy Award nominations in the Best Actress category and nabbed the award a record-setting four times. Included in the win column was Hepburn’s turn in 1982’s On Golden Pond when she was in her 70s.
As residential sales flagged in the first quarter in the face of steep loan costs, townhouse deals slowed as well, though the properties are often so unique that the potential buyer pool is small, Larson said. “They are much more subject to curb appeal than with other properties,” she said. “But there’s not always a rhyme or reason.”
C. J. Hughes , 2024-05-28 18:54:26
Source link
