Home designed by ‘Gatsby’ architects sets record for highest waterfront sale in city
STAMFORD — The home on 123 Saddle Rock Road has only claimed four owners in its 107 years. Now, the home can add a fifth owner to its history, along with a place in city record books.
According to William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, the Shippan Point property sold for $7.5 million and set a record “for the highest ever residential waterfront property sale in Stamford.”
It also set two more records: the highest residential sale in Stamford since an $8.2 million sale in 2003 and the second highest sale in city history.
In the past four years, the home has been on and off the market, Realtor.com shows, and in that time it has dropped in price by around $4 million from its $11.95 million price in April 2018. And as of June, the 5,297-square-foot home was relisted for $7.995 million.
The property sits on Stamford’s southernmost site, according to Andrew Wood, vice president of public relations and communications at Sotheby’s International Realty. The land is also rumored to have been a lookout that guarded Stamford and New York harbors during the two World Wars.
The house was built on that site in 1914 by sibling architectural team Richard Howland Hunt and Joseph Howland Hunt, Wood said in an email. Those same architects designed Beacon Towers in Sands Point, Long Island, which, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was built for Alva Belmont, the exwife of railroad tycoon William K. Vanderbilt. It was later owned by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. The house is also often cited as the “architectural muse” for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
Among the notable features in the Saddle Rock Road home are a saltwater pool, a covered stone grotto, a tennis court, a stone guest cottage and a temperaturecontrolled wine cellar.
A bear statue also stands at the home’s gated entry, earning the property the nickname of “Bear House.”