Real LI

Actress Kathleen Turner has once again lowered the price of her home on Bluff Road in Amagansett, listed with Rachel Thompson of Prudential Douglas Elliman.

In 2005, after splitting with her husband Jay Weiss, Turner put the home on the market for a reported $8 million, later taking it off the market and renovating it. Last year Turner again listed the six-bedroom home for $6.9 million. In January, REAL LI reported another price drop to $6.25 million.

The Prudential Elliman Web site now shows that Turner has lowered her price yet again to $5.9 million. Records show that the Oscar-nominated actress paid $488,500 for the home in 1990.

The 5,000-square-foot home was built in 1903 and overlooks a 25-acre preserve.

Dan's Papers recently reported that the house will be sold during the divorce proceedings.

Thompson could not be reached for comment.

The Hamptons meets pop culture in Paramount Pictures’ mega-hit, “Iron Man," starring Robert Downey Jr., who got married there, and Amagansett’s own Gwyneth Paltrow. During one scene, Paltrow’s character Pepper Potts rolls her eyes and tells Downey’s character Tony Stark that a painting he's about to buy is not from the artist’s “Springs” period as Stark thinks…it was painted in an area of East Hampton called Springs, where the artist had a studio.

This moviegoer's recollection of the dialogue is that Potts refers to a Willem DeKooning painting; a blogger at Dan’s Papers remembers it as a Jackson Pollock painting. Whether Pollock or DeKooning, both artists did have studios in Springs, and longtime connections to the Hamptons.

Incidentally, the 2,500-square-foot Springs former studio of DeKooning’s wife, Elaine, has been on the market since last year. The most recent listing price is $1.6 million, a reduction from the original $2 million asking price. The studio is listed with Josiane Fleming and Robin Kaplan of Prudential Douglas Elliman.

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Of her three homes around the world, Gwyneth Paltrow rested after the filming of "Iron Man" at her place in Amagansett, according to the latest issue of Vogue. "She's in a real groove at the beach, with lots of space and loads of children coming and going," Paltrow's friend, Julia Cuddihy Van Nice, tells the magazine. "It's all so normal when you're there and in the thick of it." Aerin Lauder. granddaughter of Estee Lauder and the one who signed up Paltrow to represent the Pleasures and Pure White Linen brands of perfume, is a Hamptons neighbor.

Paltrow and rocker husband Chris Martin purchased their home for $5.4 million in 2006. (See a photo here.) Paltrow's mother, Oscar-winning actress Blythe Danner, plans to build a house on a vacant parcel next to her daughter’s home.

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Heather Mills just won’t go away. According myhamptonsmag.com, Paul McCartney's ex might be planning to buy a house in Amagansett to be near the former Beatle when he’s in town. (Read all about his house -- and see photos -- here.) The article went on to say that Mills has “vowed to buy a house everywhere he has one." Heather, can’t you just let Paul be?

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"Sagaponack was the most expensive Hamptons enclave," reports The New York Observer, which is basing its data on numbers from Jonathan Miller. Other findings: East Hampton was the second most expensive, followed by Southampton, Amagansett and Quogue.

"I once got a customer because I knew John Lennon and Yoko Ono," Arlene Reckson, a Corcoran Group senior vice president, tells Dan's Papers. "I was part of their entourage in the '70s and when the Daily News did a piece on the anniversary of Lennon's death, I was mentioned. The customer had seen my name ... and made the connection." The article's other goodies: Beth Troy of Town and Country Real Estate in East Hampton got a client because of a great haircut, Christopher Stewart of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Amagansett finds customers on the playground with his son, and Katia Delouya of Devlin McNiff Real Estate in East Hampton hooks them in with her French accent.

Amagansett saw the "greatest increase in total volume sales" in Town and Country's 2007 sales report -- a 79 percent leap. Read the full report here.

Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow will soon have Mom nearby when she's out in the Hamptons.

Sources tell RealLI that Paltrow's mother, actress Blythe Danner, is set to build a house on a vacant parcel adjacent to her daughter’s home in Amagansett.

The Bluff Road property was purchased last month by West Fourth Street Trust for $3.4 million. The Paltrows are said to be the name behind that trust. The sellers were the heirs of author and editor Joel Carmichael, who had lived on the land for 40 years.

In 1966 Carmichael was instrumental in salvaging the circa 1902 Amagansett Life Saving Station by purchasing the building for 75 cents. He paid $10,000 to move the structure to his property where it sat until last year, when it was donated by the family to the Town of East Hampton. Today, it sits behind the East Hampton Marine Museum.

The 2.3-acre Carmichael property was put on the market over a year ago for $6.25 million with Martha Perlin of The Corcoran Group. The property was later subdivided, and sources say that Danner won out in a lively bidding war over the 1-plus acre parcel she will build on. The remaining parcel with a two-bedroom cottage is still for sale at $3 million. Perlin declined to comment on the sale, as did Danner and Paltrow.

Paltrow and rocker husband Chris Martin -- parents of Apple and Moses -- purchased their nearby home for $5.4 million in 2006. The home was featured last year in Home and Garden. See photos here.

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According to the judge who decided the nearly $50 million settlement in Paul McCartney’s divorce from Heather Mills, the ex-Beatle, shown here leaving court today, is worth about $800 million. Presumably that amount includes some of his real estate holdings, which includes a family compound in Amagansett where Sir Paul has been vacationing every August for years.

No wonder McCartney has many friends on the East End. He's known to frequent rocker John Bon Jovi's house in the Georgica area of East Hampton. For Labor Day last year, McCartney and Bon Jovi performed in an impromptu jam with Sagaponack resident Billy Joel, Sag Harbor resident Roger Waters and North Haven resident Jimmy Buffett.

Last summer, Mills reportedly rented a nearby home on Georgica Pond in East Hampton so that she could be close to daughter Beatrice while the child spent time with her father. That home is owned by writers Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi, and just a stone’s throw from property owned by fimlmaker Steven Spielberg.

For more on the McCartneys' history in the Hamptons, see here.

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In suggesting that actress Gwyneth Paltrow's marriage to Coldplay rocker Chris Martin may be on the rocks, the Daily Mail uses a magazine spread last summer on their Amagansett home as an example that something is wrong. "When the actress did a photo spread allowing America's House & Garden magazine access to the couple's Hamptons home, among the pictures of the bedroom, living room and sumptuous designer fittings there was not a hint or a word of her husband," the article says.

Hey, Forbes magazine, the East Hampton Star has a bone to pick with you!

When Forbes came out with its annual list of priciest zip codes in the nation last September, the South Fork of Long Island did not get its due. In fact, Alpine, N.J., was listed as the priciest zip code in the country. (Amagansett, Water Mill and Bridgehampton were ranked fifth, sixth and 14th, respectively.)

To make matters worse, in November when Forbes produced its list of priciest home sales of 2007, conspicously absent was the headline-grabbing sale of Adelaide de Menil’s East Hampton property, which sold for a reported $103 million to Ron Baron. Forbes left the property off the list because technically, the land was vacant. The historic homes on the property had been donated to the town and moved to Pantiago Road prior to the transfer.

But in the end, the East End of Long Island wins out despite Forbes.

The Star reports that preservation funds revenues for the area have hit record numbers because of monies earned from real estate transfer taxes. Over the past nine years, the Star says, these revenues have raked in more than $500 million.

Actress Kathleen Turner has lowered the asking price for her 1903 home on Bluff Road in Amagansett to $6.25 million, according to the Prudential Douglas Elliman Web site.

The Oscar-nominated actress had put the home on the market in 2005 for a reported $8 million without finding a buyer. Turner had some renovations done and placed it back on the market for $6.9 million last spring.

The 5,000-square-foot home has six bedrooms, 5.5 baths and overlooks a 25-acre preserve. Property records show she paid $488,500 for the house in 1990. Prudential’s Rachel Thompson has the listing.

Interview's latest issue features Ralph Lauren and some lovely photos of the designer and his family in Amagansett. More photos of the East End home -- and his others -- are featured in his new book, "Ralph Lauren" (Rizzoli, $135).

Gay activist Bob Kohler died this week of lung cancer, diagnosed only two months ago. He was 81. In looking back on his life, Gay City News spoke to friend Emmaia Gelman, who recalled what she said last year at his 80th birthday tribute -- that Kohler "would often regale his younger friends with stories from the 1950s and '60s about him and his boyfriend Ed buying a fixer-upper in Amagansett ... years before it became a gay enclave." They "later moved to Bridgehampton, openly challenging the upscale hamlet’s homophobia," the Advocate reported. After the birthday party, Kohler told Gelman: "We were gay when it wasn't cool to be gay, and I like to think that we did make a few openings here and there. We never closeted ourselves.

Newsday file photo, 1999 / Alan Raia

The East Hampton Star reports that the federal government has set aside money to build apartments for low-income seniors on Amagansett church property. Read all about it here.

Media types scrambled earlier this week when the British tabloids reported that music legend Sir Paul McCartney was spotted romancing Nancy Shevell in East Hampton.

Locals know that McCartney is no newcomer to the Hamptons. In fact, he’s been vacationing there for years, spending two weeks every August with his late wife, Linda, and their four children at their Amagansett compound.

Last month, Paul’s daughter, designer Stella McCartney told W magazine: “I've been coming (to the Hamptons) my whole life." She recalls beach parties with kegs and nights out at The Stephen Talkhouse on Main Street in Amagansett when “they’d have Muddy Waters and amazing people play.”

She told the magazine that East Hampton is still a retreat for "the American half" of her family. Her maternal grandfather was lawyer and East Hamptonite Lee Eastman. Her uncle is entertainment lawyer John Eastman, who has managed Sir Paul’s career for 40 years. When McCartney married his second wife Heather Mills in 2002, rumors swirled that the ceremony would take place at Eastman’s Lily Pond Lane mansion. Instead the now-divorcing couple married in Ireland.

Eastman’s clients have included two notable Long Islanders: musician Billy Joel, who owns homes in Sag Harbor, Centre Island and Sagaponack, and abstract artist Willem De Kooning, who worked from a studio in Springs.

McCartney, himself a visual artist, had a longtime friendship with De Kooning. He credits De Kooning with influencing his painting style. The ex-Beatle is quoted as saying, "you have to paint abstract after you've been seeing Bill de Kooning". McCartney's influences also include the scenery at Georgica Beach, the subject of a few of his works. See some of them here.

Author Steven Gaines told the Associated Press earlier this week that "the Hamptons are filled with celebrities. …This is a community that's very protective of those who live here." Apparently McCartney now stays out East after Labor Day, when things quiet down. "October is Paul's favorite month," Gaines said.

Paul McCartney: Christine Cotter/Los Angeles Times; Nancy Shevell: AP photo

Apparently Linda Stein hated fellow Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Paul Brennan, so much so that during a hospital stay for breast cancer, as president Dottie Herman visited, she screamed that he should be fired. (Brennan, a senior vice president, is in the Bridgehampton office.) "I can live through my ex-husband," Stein said. "I can live through cancer, but I can't live through Paul Brennan." Or so writes Hamptons author and good friend Steven Gaines in an article this week in the New York Observer about how Stein held grudges against almost everyone, including him. She stopped speaking to him last summer when, on the way out to the Hamptons she told Gaines that she had an inoperable brain tumor, and he said, "Linda, people with brain tumors aren't driving 80 miles and hour in the H.O.V. lane of the Long Island Expressway on the way to their summer rentals." Stein's East Hampton summer rental is where she stayed in 1996, after near-fatal chemotherapy after her second bout with cancer.

Stein, who was found murdered on Halloween in her Manhattan apartment, brokered the deal for the Montauk estate once co-owner by Andy Warhol. Last year, while in Montauk with former associate Raul Garcia Bernal (he had once stayed with Stein in her Amagansett rental, according to the article) she told Gained that he "borrowed her car and tried to pick up pretty girls."

House & Garden magazine -- which most recently featured actress Gwyneth Paltrow's Amagansett home -- will shut down with its December issue. “House & Garden has a long and venerable history within Condé Nast,” said Charles H. Townsend, Condé Nast Publications president and chief executive. “This has been a difficult decision to come to but we feel it is one that must be made at this time."

Townsend said the decision came after the sudden departure of Joseph Lagani, who went to Glam Media.

Condé Nast also publishes Architectural Digest, Domino and Vogue Living.

Need some design advice? The editors at Elle Décor have some ideas for you, straight from the homes of the rich and fabulous, compiled in the new book, "So Chic: Glamorous Lives, Stylish Spaces" (Filipacchi Publishing, $40). Included in the richly illustrated pages are profiles of three East End homes that at one time or another were owned by Ralph and Ricky Lauren, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and Reed and Delphine Krakoff.

The Laurens still own the Montauk compound where they raised three children. Built in 1940 by Antonin Raymond, a Czech native who became a leader in Japanese modernist architecture in the 1950s, the main house is decorated with vintage pieces in pale woods and bamboo, rattan and wicker. There are three outbuildings on the property, including a guesthouse, cottage and screening room. Lauren tells the editor that the home is primarily used as a summer place, but that he sometimes stays there year-round. "There is something serene and rejuvenating about being there during the winter."

Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick’s Bridgehampton home -- which they sold in 2005 for a reported $4.5 million -- is described as a 19th century farmhouse to which they added a wraparound porch. Parker asked interior designer Eric Hughes to create a home with, "color and light, and comfort, comfort, comfort." The couple swapped the home in 2005 for an oceanfront dwelling in Amagansett, reportedly paying $4.7 million.

Reed and Delphine Krakoff’s Southampton abode also made the cut. Krakoff is president and creative director for Coach, and his wife, Delphine, is a designer. The couple’s 1970s-era modernist Southampton home, which records show they sold for $11.5 million earlier this year, was decorated with artwork and sculpture and hand-painted furniture. Krakoff’s selection criteria is simple: "We don’t buy it unless we both like it."

The book was edited by Margaret Russell, editor-in-chief of Elle Decor and judge on Bravo's "Top Design," who has spent many a summer in the Hamptons.

Gwyneth Paltrow's opening up her Amagansett home again. People reports in its latest issue that there was a photo shoot in which bedding from East Hamptonite Martha Stewart's new luxury home collection was brought in. "She had to have the king-size Trousseau coverlet for keeps," the magazine reports. She bought the "Egyptian cotton quilted duvet, inspired by the domestic doyenne's own antique linens, a couple of days after the shoot." This month, Paltrow's house -- and practically all its contents -- were shown off in a House & Garden spread. But the bedding in that article came from Donna Karan. Paltrow bought her home in 2006 for $5.4 million. A check of the Macy's Web site shows that the coverlet is on sale for $199.99.

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When Seinfeld’s George Costanza wanted some Hamptons tomatoes to bring back to his mother in Queens, he knew just where to go: the Amagansett Farmer’s Market, which has been the place to buy fresh produce, gourmet foods and baked goods on the East End for more than half a century.

The market, which sits on nearly 10 acres on Main Street in East Hampton, is now listed for sale exclusively with Strough Real Estate Associates for $7.95 million. Listing agent Jennifer Robertson says the deal also includes a five-bedroom, two-bath home built in 1884. The house has a living room with a fireplace, as well as a formal dining room, a family room and an office.

Over the years, the market’s celebrity regulars have included Marilyn Monroe (who once rented nearby with Arthur Miller), Kathleen Turner, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin and George Costanza’s creator, Jerry Seinfeld.

It's finally out -- House & Garden magazine's exclusive spread on the Amagansett home actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Coldplay's Chris Martin, bought last year. See photos, and more.

The first thing actress Gwyneth Paltrow bought for her shingle-style Amagansett house was a $37,500 Boontje Blossum chandelier, but her "major splurge" was on a yoga and pilates studio that she uses every day.

That's according to the latest issue of Us Weekly, in a sneak peek of a spread in the Oct. 9 issue of House & Garden magazine.

Paltrow and husband, Coldplay rocker Chris Martin, bought the unfinished home for $5.4 million in 2006. First, they added bedrooms to accommodate their "big families," which includes children Apple, 3, and Moses, 18 months, mother, actress Blythe Danner, and brother, director Jake Paltrow.

The house is 7,000 square feet and two miles from the ocean.

Paltrow, who says she was hands-on in decorating the house, is quoted as saying that she doesn't want things too "fussy" or "decorated."

"I don't want the kids to feel there's any place they can't go," she says. "I want them to feel like it's their house."

The Us spread includes photos from the upcoming House & Garden of Paltrow's kitchen, with its Michael Minkoff cabinets, master bedroom, with its calfskin bed, and dining room, with that chandelier and plates from the budget store CB2.

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