04/15/08 - “The house is like a work of art and it’s priced that way,” says local broker Barbara Wells, of Prudential Connecticut Realty

Leona Helmsley’s Greenwich Estate Hits Market at $125 Million

Wall Street Journal Blogs, NY

Leona Helmsley’s Greenwich, Conn., estate (pictured here) is officially on the market with a hefty $125 million price tag. (Property taxes: over $1.8 million.) There will be a broker open house for the home on Round Hill Road today, but no cellphones or cameras will be allowed, a local broker tells us....

...The listing agent is David Ogilvy of Christie’s Great Estates.

Known as Dunnellen Hall, the estate of more than 40 acres was at the center of Mrs. Helmsley’s 1989 federal tax-evasion trial, when she was accused of illegally billing her company for more than $3 million of property renovations. The former model, dubbed the “queen of mean,” served 19 months in federal prison. She died in August at age 87....

...The $125 million price tag is considered hefty even for Greenwich, where few residential deals have topped $100 million. Industrialist Daniel Gray Reid paid $1 million to build it. (See ” ‘Queen of Mean’ Lair to List for $125 Million“).

Dunnellen Hall is one of the few intact historic estates left in town, says an archivist with Greenwich’s Historical Society in this Journal article. Many Greenwich homes are being torn down, according to this Journal article from Saturday. –Christina S.N. Lewis

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