This $13.5 Million Norman Jaffe-Designed Long Island Mansion is Ideal for an Art Collector
In 1974, at the height of his creativity and professional renown, unusually prolific architect Norman Jaffe completed a sprawling residence in the prestigious estate section of Long Island’s high-brow village of Old Westbury that’s now on the market for $13.5 million. The listing is held by Sandy Binder and Danielle Laria of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty.
Jaffe was commissioned to build the I U Willets Road residence by Joseph S. Wohl, whose 1979 obit in The New York Times described him as a “lawyer and real estate man” affiliated with the firm of Wohl, Loewe, Stettner & Krim. The Wohl family hung on to the house until 2001 when it was sold for $2.9 million; the six-acre spread last changed hands, according to tax records, in 2009 when contemporary art collecting oil and gas industry investor Jay Bernstein and his wife Jill bought it for $6.7 million. The couple first tried to sell the home in 2021 for $15 million.
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The low-slung stone and cedar residence, behind gates amid rolling lawns and mature specimen trees, sprawls out over more than 14,200 square feet with seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms, plus three additional powder rooms. Separated by three courtyards, one of them capped by a vaulted glass roof, the various wings are connected by a long, skylight-topped gallery.
The home’s ample living and entertaining rooms, its long galleries, and its courtyard gardens are ideal settings to display and view artwork of all mediums, from small works on paper to large works on canvas to sculpture and installation. Indeed, throughout the house and across the grounds, the sellers have displayed an extensive collection that incorporates work by icons of contemporary art such as Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, Yayoi Kusama, Dan Flavin, and Chris Burden.
One wing comprises the homeowner’s private spaces, which include a double-height paneled library with a marble fireplace and a sun-drenched gym with an attached bath. The spacious primary bedroom has walls of glass that look into lush walled courtyard gardens, as well as a dressing room and a pair of updated bathrooms with a spa tub and steam shower.
At the far end of the house, a huge space for entertaining includes a bar and floor-to-ceiling walls of glass that slide open to a series of slate terraces above and around the heated swimming pool. Beyond the pool are thickets of flowering shrubbery and evenly mown emerald lawns. Set at a distance from the house and shielded by a thick stand of trees, a self-contained three-bedroom residence was built in 2010 in a style that complements the main residence.
Long the seat of some of the U.S.’s oldest and wealthiest families, including the Phipps, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and du Ponts, Old Westbury, about 25 miles east of midtown Manhattan, has also been home to sitcom star Kevin James, shock jock Howard Stern, and Victoria Gotti, the daughter of notorious mob boss John Gotti.
Click here for more photos of 124 I U Willets Road.
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