Andy Warhol’s Famed Hamptons 'Fishing Camp' Sells for Record $50 Million
An extraordinary Hamptons “fishing camp” — built in the 1930s for heirs to the Arm & Hammer Baking Soda fortune, purchased from them by pop artist Andy Warhol and his associate Paul Morrissey in 1971 for just $225,000, and most recently owned by J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler — has sold for $50 million, believed to be a record in Montauk, New York, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Billionaire art collector Adam Lindemann bought the compound of whitewashed cottages. He had earlier confirmed to the New York Post’s Page Six that he was in contract to buy the property, saying: “I knew Andy in the early 1980s as a very young man, and I’m a collector of his work. … I’m very lucky to have this opportunity to live out this dream. It’s a work of art.”
The estate is named Eothen, supposedly meaning “from the east” or “at first light” in ancient Greek, and originally Douglas Elliman Real Estate marketed it as a 30-acre equestrian property for $85 million. But Page Six heard that Lindemann “had no interest in the horse farm.” Instead, he bought the 6-acre parcel including the main house, and the remaining 24 acres are still available as a separate property, the Journal says.
It was Warhol’s purchase of Eothen that put briny, windswept Montauk on the map. His guests and renters included the Rolling Stones, who rehearsed their “Black and Blue” album there and drew its song “Memory Motel” from a village hotel so named; Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who stayed there while helping the eccentric relatives who later became famous in “Grey Gardens”; and Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, fashion designer Halston and writer Truman Capote, among others. Keith Richards was even photographed in the kitchen, shirtless, cooking eggs.
But before Drexler bought the property from Morrissey for $27.5 million in 2007, the property had languished on the market for several years. A New York Times article in 2006 was headlined “The Unsold Warhol”; a former listing agent for Eothen told the paper that for $40 million (the asking price at the time, down from $50 million in 2001, even though only the 6-acre parcel was on offer), buyers want “satin sheets and ice makers and Sub-Zero refrigerators and flat-screen TVs, built-in pools.”
The Times also spoke to Tina Fredericks, the agent who sold Eothen to Warhol and Morrissey:
“In 1971, Warhol was bored with being driven around to see houses and spent most of the time snapping Polaroids of other people in the car, Ms. Fredericks recalled recently. But he perked up as he noticed the ‘sort of funky air’ of the village of Montauk and the Memory Motel.
"The village is still a place untouched by Citarella or the pool-blue awning of Tiffany & Company, a rugged fisherman’s town where shark-fishing competitions are promoted on signs near the entrance to the village.
"Eothen lies outside the village, up a winding dirt road that ends on a 30-foot cliff that overlooks the Atlantic. 'I just remember him liking it immediately and buying it — boom, like that,’ together with Mr. Morrissey, Ms. Fredericks said. But Warhol didn’t visit often, she said. 'He had a lot of problems with the wind, which took his hairpiece off.’”
More fabulously retro homes on Yahoo Real Estate:
• Charlton Heston’s Incredible $12M Time Capsule Home Is Already Pending Sale (37 photos)
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Pristine Frozen-in-Time Home (43 photos)
• We’re Calling It: This Enormous Restored Bungalow Is Hollywood’s Most Beautiful Home (41 photos)
• Half-Preserved, Half-Destroyed, Woolworth Mansion Asks Just $295,000 (32 photos)
