The actress has owned the rustic-chic house in Sagaponack, New York, since 2019
2 min
Drew Barrymore is making an almost $8.5 million adjustment to her real estate portfolio with the listing of her home in the Hamptons.
The renovated barn, built in 1920, is asking $8.45 million and sits on 1.7 acres in the heart of Sagaponack, less than a mile from the ocean. It hit the market last week.
The actress and talk show host has owned the seven-bedroom home—which has appeared across her social media platforms—since 2019, when she paid $5.5 million for it using a limited liability company for the purchase, records in PropertyShark show.
Despite its transformation into a residence, the former barn still has plenty of period charm, from soaring ceilings and exposed beams to hardwood floors.
The hub of the 6,850-square-foot, light-filled home is the great room and adjacent breakfast nook and kitchen, the latter of which is separated from the rest of the space by a wall made from window frames. Glass doors open up from the great room onto a deck.
There’s also a living room with a brick fireplace, a pink-painted dining room with a sloping ceiling and a skylight, and a den. Plus a separate one-bedroom guest house with a living room and office area, according to the listing with Kathy Konzet of Sotheby’s International Realty – East Hampton Brokerage. Konzet wasn’t immediately available to comment.
The park-like grounds, complete with flowering gardens and rolling lawns, are home to a pool, pool house, a bocce court and plenty of areas for outside entertaining.
Barrymore, 49, began her career at just 11 months old when she appeared in a dog food commercial, and at 7, she starred in 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” As an adult she’s best known for roles in “Charlie’s Angels,” “Grey Gardens,” “The Wedding Singer,”and “50 First Dates.”
Her talk show, “The Drew Barrymore Show,” debuted in 2020. A representative for the star couldn’t be reached for comment.
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What a quarter-million dollars gets you in the western capital.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
3 min
Many luxury hotels only build on their gilded reputations with each passing decade. But others are less fortunate. Here are five long-gone grandes dames that fell from grace—and one that persists, but in a significantly diminished form.
A magnet for celebrities, the Garden of Allah was once the scene-making equivalent of today’s Chateau Marmont. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s affair allegedly started there and Humphrey Bogart lived in one of its bungalows for a time.
Crimean expat Alla Nazimova leased a grand home in Hollywood after World War I, but soon turned it into a hotel, where she prioritised glamorous clientele. Others risked being ejected by guards and a fearsome dog dubbed the Hound of the Baskervilles. Demolished in the 1950s, the site’s now a parking lot.
The Astor family hoped to repeat their success when they opened this sequel to their megahit Waldorf Astoria hotel in 1904. It became an anchor of the nascent Theater District, buzzy (and naughty) enough to inspire Cole Porter to write in “High Society”: “Have you heard that Mimsie Starr…got pinched in the Astor Bar?”
That bar soon gained another reputation. “Gentlemen who preferred the company of other gentlemen would meet in a certain section of the bar,” said travel expert Henry Harteveldt of consulting firm Atmosphere Research. By the 1960s, the hotel had lost its lustre and was demolished; the 54-storey One Astor Plaza skyscraper was built in its place.
In the 1950s, colonial officers around Africa treated Mozambique as an off-duty playground. They flocked, in particular, to the Santa Carolina, a five-star hotel on a gorgeous archipelago off the country’s southern coast.
Run by a Portuguese businessman and his wife, the resort included an airstrip that ferried visitors in and out. Ask locals why the place was eventually reduced to rubble, and some whisper that the couple were cursed—and that’s why no one wanted to take over when the business collapsed in the ’70s. Today, seeing the abandoned, crumbled ruins and murals bleached by the sun, it’s hard to dismiss their superstitions entirely.
The overwater bungalow, a shorthand for barefoot luxury around the world, began in French Polynesia—but not with the locals. Instead, it was a marketing gimmick cooked up by a trio of rascally Americans. They moved to French Polynesia in the late 1950s, and soon tried to capitalise on the newly built international airport and a looming tourism boom.
That proved difficult because their five-room hotel on the island of Raiatea lacked a beach. They devised a fix: building rooms on pontoons above the water. They were an instant phenomenon, spreading around the islands and the world—per fan site OverwaterBungalows.net , there are now more than 9,000 worldwide, from the Maldives to Mexico. That first property, though, is no more.
The Ricker family started out as innkeepers, running a stagecoach stop in Maine in the 1790s. When Hiram Ricker took over the operation, the family expanded into the business by which it would make its fortune: water. Thanks to savvy marketing, by the 1870s, doctors were prescribing Poland Spring mineral water and die-hards were making pilgrimages to the source.
The Rickers opened the Poland Spring House in 1876, and eventually expanded it to include one of the earliest resort-based golf courses in the country, a barber shop, dance studio and music hall. By the turn of the century, it was among the most glamorous resort complexes in New England.
Mismanagement eventually forced its sale in 1962, and both the water operation and hospitality holdings went through several owners and operators. While the water venture retains its prominence, the hotel has weathered less well, becoming a pleasant—but far from luxurious—mid-market resort. Former NYU hospitality professor Bjorn Hanson says attempts at upgrading over the decades have been futile. “I was a consultant to a developer in the 1970s to return the resort to its ‘former glory,’ but it never happened.”
