Ex-Marcos mansion up for sale again, but at 1/3 of original price
The former Marcos mansion in New York’s Long Island is up for sale again, but with a hefty two-thirds price shaved off from its original asking price.
Known as the Lindenmere Estate, the 14-bedroom, 16-and-a-half bath Dutch colonial house on an 8.2-acre (3.3-hectare) beachfront estate is being auctioned on Sept. 13.
Waltz Auction has set a minimum bid of $2.1 million, way down from the 2016 asking price of $5.9 million. According to the Presidential Commission on Good Government, Imelda Marcos bought the estate in Center Moriches, a seaside hamlet below the famous Hamptons, for an unknown amount in 1981.
Mrs. Marcos was said to have visited the house only eight times, spending only one night, in the nearly five years that they owned it.
After the property was surrendered in the wake of the 1986 EDSA Revolt by banana magnate Antonio Floirendo, who acknowledged that he was holding the estate for the Marcoses, the Philippine government tried, but failed to sell it in 1987 for $4.5 million.
It sat unsold until 1996, when Manila drastically reduced the price to $1.6 million. The property has changed hands at least twice since then, according to local news reports.
Its last known owner was a real estate entrepreneur, who converted the property, first built in 1915, into a luxury bed-and-breakfast facility and a private social club, spending over $1 million in renovation.
“But the whole time I was renovating it, I kept thinking that it was originally built as an estate, and I decided I wanted to keep it that way,” owner Janet Davis told Newsday in 2015. “It’s the largest estate on the Great South Bay and reminiscent of the glory days of the Roaring ’20s and Gatsby era.”
In addition to a 425-feet (129.5-meter) long water frontage, the property also features a glass-enclosed pagoda pool house, a tennis court, and a carriage house.
The pagoda-style pool house was said to have been designed by Mrs. Marcos herself, with radius cedar beams imported from the Philippines. Two Capiz shell chandeliers and a restored custom rug that are said to also have belonged to Mrs. Marcos still adorn the pool house.
A painting of Filipino peasants also still hangs at the dining room.