Historic New York Estate Has Ties To Addison Mizner, Timothy Leary & Standard Oil

In what might have been the best New York real estate deal since the Dutch bought Manhattan in 1626 for $24 in trinkets, one of New York’s historic properties, which includes a 38-room Victorian mansion, a 10,000-square-foot guest home, a stone bowling alley, a carriage house, a gatehouse, and much more on 2,078 acres, has hit the market for $65 million. The property last sold for just $500,000 in 1963, when Standard Oil president Walter C. Teagle sold the long-neglected property to brothers Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, heirs to the Mellon family fortune, for $500,000. If it gets its asking price, it will more than triple the record for a real estate sale price in the Millbrook area, which currently stands at $19 million.

The Hitchcock estate, also known as Daheim (“at home” in German), became infamous in the 1960s as the domain of Harvard psychologist-turned-LSD-evangelist Timothy Leary, who used the property for psychedelic experimentation for five years. Nina Graboi, an influential figure in the psychedelic movement, described the scene as “a cross between a country club, a madhouse, a research institute, a monastery, and a Fellini movie set.” Considered “the most dangerous man in America” by Richard Nixon, Leary hosted such counterculture luminaries as Allen Ginsberg and attracted frequent raids by the FBI, which eventually caused him to leave. The estate fell into disrepair but has undergone extensive renovations in recent years that have restored it to its former glory.