America's Doomed Mansions
November 21, 2011
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One billionaire’s castle is another billionaire’s teardown. Never mind the existing mansion—it’s the location these moguls want, not someone else’s hand-me-down house. Instead of renovating, the very rich call in the wrecking ball and build their personal playgrounds from scratch.
We tracked 10 mansions that have been bulldozed or are soon to be. Some languished for years on the market, nary a buyer in sight. Others deteriorated to the point of no return. Some were gargantuan, outdated or, most often, just not suited to the new owner’s taste.
John Kean, an ultra high-end builder of stately $3 million to more than $75 million homes, “each a work of art,” in the New York metropolitan area, has torn down scores of old manor homes to build new, larger mansions that look like they have been there forever. The reason: “the land is so valuable, particularly on the water.” Besides, he added, “just because a celebrity owned it doesn’t mean it’s a great house.” The misconception, he added, is “that we are knocking down spectacular homes,” Kean says. “I am really knocking down something that might have been a mansion 50 years ago, but not by today’s standards.”
Paul J. Mateyunas, a restoration consultant and an agent with Daniel Gale Sotheby’s in Locust Valley, N.Y. has tracked the demise of hundreds of Great Gatsby-era mansions.
“It’s sad; it’s losing a little bit of history,” Mateyunas said. “It is unfortunate when it happens. You can’t replicate a lot of these structures.”
For years, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple wanted to tear down a 17,000-square-foot, 35-room Spanish-style mansion he owned since the 1980s in Woodside, Calif., south of San Francisco. He instead envisioned a smaller, likely more techno-savvy home for his family on the lot. After battling legal challenges to save or move the 1920s “Jackling House,” built by the California architect George Washington Smith for a prosperous copper entrepreneur, Jobs received a demolition permit. Howard N. Ellman, Jobs’s lawyer, said the house was bulldozed in February but Jobs’s dwindling health put the plans on hold. Janet Koelsch, the Woodside town clerk, confirms there have been no applications for development received for the property since demolition of the house.
Then there are mansion owners who simply have a change of heart. A decade ago, uber luxury builder Mark Pulte of Mark Timothy, Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., had completed 90% of a $40 million, 40,000-square-foot oceanfront mansion in Delray Beach, Fla. when one of the owners, a thirty-something heir to the Coca-Cola fortune and his wife, decided they didn’t want to live there. “He said, ‘stop finishing the house,’” Mr. Pulte recalled. “They never moved in.” After six months on the market, Mr. Pulte “bought it back for $16 million.” First, he rented it out to filmmaker Michael Bay. What didn’t get torn up or blown up making the Will Smith movie Bad Boys II, Mr. Pulte demolished. He sold off the three lots it sat on for $8 million apiece and replaced the mega-mansion with oceanfront homes.
Here are five of the best known doomed American mansions:
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| Jackling House, in Woodside, CA, was torn down by owner Steve Jobs earlier this year. Photos: Forbes.com |
Intending to tear it down and build a new house for his family, Steve Jobs apparently didn't care for the looks or the historical significance of the Jackling House, his 35-room mansion built in the 1920s for Daniel Jackling, a copper mogul. Located in an upscale town that's gone techie, the house had close to 15,000 square feet and was built by George Washington Smith, a well known California architect of his day. After legal hassles that delayed a demolition permit for nearly a decade, the mansion was torn down in February. No plans have been filed to build on the site.
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| Land's End in Sands Point, NY was knocked down in March. Photos: Top - oldlongisland.com | Bottom - AP |
It may have the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan's house in ''The Great Gatsby. The 20- room, white-columned home on 13 waterfront acres was perfect for the lavish parties thrown by its onetime owner, Herbert Bayard Swope, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and publisher of the New York World. The spectacular fetes drew boldface names of the Roaring Twenties, including Winston Churchill, George Gershwin and the Vanderbilts. But it needed too much work to be livable by today’s standards and there was nary a buyer among the neighbors, though preservationists and F. Scott Fitzgerald aficionados balked at its demise. Last March, the wrecking ball struck, clearing the land for Seagate, a new, gated community of five custom $10 million to $17 million mansions.
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| Coca Cola Mansion in Delray Beach, FL was torn down for other beachfront homes. Photos: priceypads.com |
This 40,000-square-foot oceanfront mansion was 90% complete when the owners, an heir to the Coca Cola empire and his wife, changed their minds. They halted construction and put it on the market for $40 million. Five months later, super luxury South Florida builder Mark Pulte of Mark Timothy, Inc. bought the Mediterranean palace for $16 million, knocked it down and built three smaller beachfront mansions on the property.
Dragon Head Mansion
Location: Southampton, N.Y.
Tear Down Mansion: Dragon Head
Property Owner: Calvin Klein
Location: Southampton, N.Y.
Tear Down Mansion: Dragon Head
Property Owner: Calvin Klein
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| Dragon Head, in Southampton, NY was torn down several years ago. Photos: Top - Sotheby's International Realty | Bottom - Corcoran.com |
Dragon Head, an ungainly 38,000 square foot Gothic behemoth with a 50-foot turret, towers and multiple chimneys on an idyllic seven- acre oceanfront plot, would have made the perfect haunted house. Its previous owner filled the manse with medieval armor, a shark tank and a 16th century Norman pub imported from France. In 2003, the fashion designer Calvin Klein paid about $30 million for the bloated castle. Instead of paring it down to his signature minimalist style, two years ago he demolished the place to make room for a more understated chic, green, modernist manse.
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| Belmeade Mansion in Powhatan, VA is slated for demolition. Photo: Richmondregional.org |
Newly on the list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places put out by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the days may be numbered for Belmead-on-the-James, an 1845 Gothic Revival manor house, an “architectural triumph” by renowned American architect Alexander Jackson Davis and the “heart” of the surrounding 2,000 acre rural landscape. Threatened by serious deterioration, the mansion built by slaves for plantation owners needs “emergency roof work” to stop “ongoing structural damage.” In the 1890s, a wealthy woman named Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament turned the plantation into two private schools for young African American and Native American students, with a boys school headquartered in the former mansion.
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