Must see pool: New York seaside estate tied to Colgate fortune going to highest bidder
A magnificent 33-acre beachfront estate on the Gold Coast of Long Island—filled with rich history and featuring a home built by world-renowned architect Edward Durell Stone—is being sold to the highest bidder through an auction.
“Villa Riele is one of the area’s legendary estates,” according to the official auction listing by Elite Auctions.
The property was once part of the estate of Gilbert Bayard Colgate, great grandson of William Colgate, who founded the company that would become Colgate-Palmolive, according to Tara McLean, president of Elite Auctions.
Gilbert Colgate, who served as a director of the Colgate company, was also one of the founders of Planned Parenthood. He won a bronze medal in the two-man bobsledding competition at the 1936 Winter Olympics, McLean added in an email Q&A.
The no-reserve auction takes place Aug. 1, 2020. The property was listed for sale in July 2020 for $18 million, according to realtor.com.
The 33-acre piece of land with a quarter-mile stretch of private beach is already subdivided into four lots, all included in the auction. The principal property sits on 11 acres. The other lots are 10 acres, 9.8 acres and 2.2 acres in size.
Stone—whose work includes Radio City Music Hall, the lobby and ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the GM building in Manhattan—designed the mid-century Villa Riele mansion, which Elite Auctions calls “a masterpiece, and one of the only two residential projects he took on.”
An original mansion was sold and is now a neighboring estate to the east of Villa Riele. The remaining 33 acres is what comprises the Villa Riele Estate today, including the four-bedroom, six-bath, 10,000-square-foot main residence built in 1964.
That luxurious house includes an nine-foot-deep indoor pool with a family room and dining room on the side. Stone included his signature circular skylights that are retractable. A huge wrap-around patio has water views.
A Villa Riele summer beach house at the water’s edge of the property was built in 1967. This house consists of a living room, a bedroom, a small kitchen area, one indoor full bath and an outdoor half bath.
The property, less than an hour from Manhattan, is owned by Gabriele Lagerwall, who purchased it from Robert and Gilbert Colgate, descendants of the founder of Colgate-Palmolive, in 1961, according to an article in the Huntington, N.Y. local news website Patch. Lagerwall is also known as Baroness W. Langer von Langendorff and has been prominent on the Manhattan social scene., according to media reports. She was married to Baron von Langendorff, the creator White Shoulders perfume, Patch reported.
Asked about who might be a likely buyer of the estate, McLean said, “given the offering has divided lots, either someone seeking privacy and a beautiful beachfront estate for their family away from the city, especially given this trend during the rise of the Coronavirus, or an opportunity for a developer to build on the subdivided lots.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Must see pool: New York seaside estate tied to Colgate fortune going to highest bidder."
