Friday, October 23, 2009

Jann Wenner and Matt Nye Head to the Hamptons

BUYER: Jann Wenner and Matt Nye
LOCATION: Old Montauk Highway, Montauk, NY
PRICE: $11,900,000
SIZE: 6,300 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: ...Reach out and catch the waves from all rooms in this 6300 square foot home with vaulted living room and dining room and huge stone fireplace, additional great room with eating area, office, exercise room, 8 bedrooms and plenty of entertaining space. Newly updated with a clean palate. Outdoor ocean side multi-level patios and decking including huge oceanfront hot tub...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Today we learned that the Feds unloaded Bernie and Ruth Madoff's Montauk, NY beach house for well over its $8,750,000 asking price and yesterday we learned the publishing pooh-bah Jann Wenner and his long time man-friend Matt Nye scooped up a new vacation house just down the beach. Since we've already spent some time wallowing in the schadenfreude of these Madoff people this morning, let's move on and have a look-see at what a couple of a-list gays do with their real estate dollars.

Mister Wenner is, of course, the co-founder, owner and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine and his eponymous company Wenner Media also owns Men's Journal and the celebrity gossip glossy US Weekly. Mister Nye is (or was) a fashion designer. Together they have three young children. Prior to going gay, Mister Wenner was married–and technically still is married–to a ladee named Jane with whom he has three children. By all accounts all parties are amicable, Missus Wenner is still on the payroll at Wenner Media and still occupies the uber-contemporary ocean front estate in East Hampton she once shared with her formerly hetero huzband.

Listing information for the Hamptons house the glammy gays bought shows the ocean front "compound" on Old Montauk Highway was listed with an asking price of $14,900,000. All recent reports on the matter state a purchase price of $11,900,000 but, as of this morning, Your Mama can't yet confirm that with any of the property records we accessed.

The property includes two parcels that combined total almost 1.5 acres with 200-ish feet of ocean front magnificence that tumbles gracefully down to the soft sand. The architecturally wonky and ass-uglee Cape style house stands three stories on the water side, measures 6,300 square feet according to listing information and includes 8 bedrooms and 6.5 poopers.

There are, according to listing information, several indoor entertaining spaces including a "great room" that includes an eating area, and another living and dining room with a massive stone fireplace, ocean views, Mexican paver stone floors, and a steeply peaked and undeniably churchy wood beamed ceiling. We swoon for the ceiling but Your Mama recommends Misters Wenner and Nye have all that Mexican paver tile pulled up and replaced with something stunning like waxed Ipe or reclaimed black walnut like in Adam Lippe's Manhattan penthouse we discussed yesterday. A material like that will surely make more work for Mister Wenner's minimum wage house gurls (or boys) and our imperious house gurl Svetlana would have a conniption to end all conniptions if we installed a waxed wood floor in a beach house, but...we'd do it anyway.

In addition to all of the eight bedrooms, listing information indicates house also contains a den, a study, office, and an exercise room which is excellent because all the children know how the homosexuals enjoy pushing weights and working the cardio machines in order to keep their pectorals pumped, abs six-packed and boo-tays as hard as stone.

A deck runs most of the length of the middle floor and has an exterior stair case that leads down to the backyard which includes a narrow strip of lawn and several ocean view patios and a party-sized hot tub. A curving path that cuts through the scrub provides easy access to the shore. Listing information indicates the there is room and plans for a guest house and a swimming pool.

Nearby neighbors include a number of high finance folks, Academy Award winning actor Robert Deniro, and fashion designer Ralph Lauren who owns a sprawling multi-acre compound just a couple doors down and whose company has been in the p.r. hot seat lately for digitally retouching an already paper thin model to look so skinny that her head was actually wider than her impossibly slim hips.

Misters Wenner and Nye, no strangers to dee-luxe digs, own a posh townhouse on West 74th Street in New York City as well as a ski house in Sun Valley, ID and a 69.1 acre upstate New York country spread overlooking the Hudson River in Tivoli, NY for which they forked over $5,800,000 in early 2008.

7 comments:

Jimmy said...

Give me a break: who else but former bad guys, spys, etc. is Bernie going to associate with: He's in PRISON.

Madam Pince said...

I agree, Mama -- that is one ass-ugly house. That peak on the end needs balance. Not my cup of tea.

Anonymous said...

Perfection. Where god would live if he had money. And were gay.

The Down East Dilettante said...

Amazing. Up here on the coast of Maine, a totally comparable property would be a couple million, giveL or take...maybe 3. Go figure. Location, location...

lil' gay boy said...

Good eye, Madam Pince; the only thing this particular property has going for it is the additional lot to the west that should preserve the sunset view for some time to come.

It's typical construction for the area; with its plethora of gable, shed and gambrel roofs & dormers, what apparently started out as a modest, ass-uglee Cape has accreted into the equivalent of an architectural coral reef...

Given the view, let's hope the boys can afford to tear it down to the foundation & rebuild; I could even stomach an almost gen-yoo-ine Robert AM Stern Shingle Style wannabee if it meant scraping this ugly wad off Montauk's shoe.

Arundel said...

Yeah, the front of the house is ugly and undistinguished. Maybe the rich and famous like it that way sometimes? Move along, nothing to see here?

Who cares about the exterior when you've got those gorgeous ocean views in every room. They'll probably only be using the house 2 months of the year, might as well be right on the beach if you've got the ungodly bucks to do it.

An East End resident myself, it's been interesting how hot Montauk has become in the past few years. There's always been well-off celebs there, but the place is distinctly un-Hamptony. A lot more laid-back, some of the beachy bars have a honky-tonk air. Montauk in winter is depressing. But maybe that laid-backness is why it's appealing these days.

The Hamptons in summertime ratchets up the annoyance factor every summer, when you think it couldn't be ratcheted further. Montauk's a lot more easy going.

And I really am loving those beach views.

Anonymous said...

Clean, crisp, refreshing. I like it a lot. But what's with these heteros who go gay? Did wifey gradually castrate them psychologically? Seems that way.