Island mansion sells for $21.5M
A historic 18-room mansion on Rogers Island was sold this week for $21.5 million, which the listing real estate agent said is the largest residential Multiple Listing Service sale in the history of New Haven County and one of the largest in the state.
The sale of the property, which includes the 7.5-acre private island as well as the 8,746-square-foot mansion, closed Monday, said Joe Piscitelli, the listing agent for Coldwell Banker’s Branford office. Christine and Edmund Stoecklein sold the island, which Piscitelli said they bought in 2003 and used as a vacation retreat, after buying it for $22.3 million.
The buyer, whom Piscitelli declined to identify, is from Fairfield County and also will use the island as a vacation retreat. The property, which has 10 bedrooms, three fireplaces and five bathrooms in the main house, went on the market in late June, he said.
Piscitelli said although the new owner paid less for the property than what the Stoeckleins had been seeking, the market for luxury properties along the New Haven County portion of Connecticut’s shoreline “is definitely seeing an uptick.”
The Stoeckleins were the sixth owners of the Tudor-style mansion, Piscitelli said, which was built in the early 1900s and has an assesed value of $7.7 million, according to public records.
The property includes a 4-bedroom guest house, a detached art
studio, an in-ground pool, two docks, tennis courts, a putting green originally designed by golfing great Jack Nicklaus, and elaborate gardens, according to the MLS listing. Many of the properties amenities, including the gardens, were added while the Stoeckleins owned the mansion, Piscitelli said.
“She did a beautiful job with it,” he said of the improvements Christine Stoecklein made to the property.
Edmund Stoecklein is a former architect and real estate agent. He married his wife, the widow of partygoods magnate John Svenningsen, in 2015.
Rogers Island is one of eight in the Thimble Islands chain owned by the Stoeckleins that the
reported in March
2017 were for sale. Piscitelli said that couple owns a vineyard in California and is seeking to spend more time on the West Coast.
The mansion was built by financier and yachtsman John Jay Phelps, who bought the island, which he called Yon Comis Island, in 1900, according to information found in Branford’s Blackstone Library. The island had been used for quarrying before Phelps, a Yale graduate, bought it.
Phelps died in 1948 and the property was sold to a pair of families. The property was sold again in 1992 for
$2.65 million, said Piscitelli, who was the real estate agent involved in that deal as well as the latest sale.