Famed ‘Grey Gardens’ Home Is Up for Sale
The famed, once-dilapidated home featured in cult favorite documentary Grey Gardens is up for sale. According to Newsday, the East Hampton home is listed for $19.995 million.
Grey Gardens, the mansion occupied by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ aunt Edith Bouvier Beale (“Big Edie”) and her cousin Edith Beale (“little Edie”), is on the market for the first time since 1979. In the 1975 documentary named after the residence, the 10-bedroom rundown home served as the backdrop for the eccentric relatives, who lived in seclusion and squalor.
Their story inspired a number of other creative endeavors, including the Emmy Award-winning 2009 HBO film of the same name starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange and a 2006 Broadway musical.
Rufus Wainwright grew up near Grey Gardens. A self-proclaimed “Grey Gardens fanatic,” he told Rolling Stone during the movie’s 40th anniversary that he had seen the film at least a dozen times. He recorded the song “Grey Gardens” in 2001 and the documentary’s late co-director Albert Maysles filmed Wainwright’s 2009 CD/DVD Rufus Wainwright: Milwaukee at Last!!!. Grey Gardens also showcases a member of Wainwright’s family.
“There’s this part in the movie where Little Edie is showing all of the drawings from long ago when things were a little more together. There’s one drawing of her as a teenager and she says, ‘This was done by Mr. Wainwright in the solarium at Grey Gardens.’ And then: ‘He’s from a good family; he’s on the social register,'” Wainwright said. The drawing was crafted by his great-grandfather’s brother.
Big Edie died in 1977. Two years later, Little Edie sold the home to longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who died in 2014, and his wife, journalist Sally Quinn. The couple restored the seven-bedroom home built in 1897.