It’s your chance to own a legendary slice of American history. The Hamptons estate where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her sister, Lee Radziwill, spent their childhood summers, is now listed for $55 million, the Wall Street Journal first reported. This is just two months after her former Georgetown mansion in Washington, D.C., went on the market.
The iconic estate, known as Lasata—or “place of peace” in the Algonquin language of the native Montaukett people—was built around 1917 in East Hampton, New York. The seven-acre grounds contain a two-bedroom guesthouse, a caretaker’s cottage, a pool house, a three-car garage and workshop, and, of course, an eight-bedroom mansion designed by architect Arthur C. Jackson in the Arts and Crafts style.
The Hamptons estate can be accessed through an arched entryway with intricate parquet flooring.
Television commercial and film producer David Zander is selling the home, which he purchased from former Coach creative director Reed Krakoff for $24 million in 2018. Zander, a collector of architecturally interesting homes, was so committed to the design of the home that no expense was spared. He brought on ELLE DECOR A-List interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch to revamp the interiors and landscape architect Louis Benech to do the gardens and landscaping. According to the Wall Street Journal, Zander flew in a crew of Parisian painters to brush out the walls in the house in a unique cottony stroke. The result is a grand estate that retains much of its classic elegance and timeless design.
A wooden dining table looks out of the estate’s grounds, with rolling lawns and a variety of mature trees, including linden, London plane, cork, and American elm.
The house, originally built for Manhattan lawyer George Wellington Schurman, transferred hands in 1925 to John Vernou Bouvier Jr., a successful lawyer who married an heiress and was a grandfather to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Little Edie Beale, and Lee Radziwill. It was their summer home in what was then a quaint town of potato fields, old windmills, and tennis clubs. It was where young Jackie learned to ride and jump, likely meandered the property’s unending orchards and long grape arbor, and was pampered in a great house with an entourage of servants.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in Southampton in 1934. She’s with her mother, Janet Lee Bouvier, and her father, John Bouvier.
Jackie’s parents divorced in 1940, and after her mother married Hugh Auchincloss in 1942, the family began spending summers at his farm in Newport, Rhode Island, instead of East Hampton. But Jackie’s love for Lasata never waned. When planning the funeral arrangements after the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, she insisted on decorating St. Patrick’s Cathedral with sprays of summer flowers in white wicker baskets. “I want everything to look like a summer garden, like Lasata in August,” she said, according to Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn?: Timeless Lessons on Love, Power, and Style.
Los Angeles–based Zander told the Wall Street Journal he is selling because he spends little time at Lasata. Since purchasing the home, he has spent a total of about a month there, he told the Journal. “It seems like a crazy waste,” he said.
The listing is held by Eileen O’Neill of the Corcoran Group and Ed Petrie of Compass.
Assistant Digital Editor
Rachel Silva, the Assistant Digital Editor at ELLE DECOR, covers design, architecture, trends, and anything to do with haute couture. She has previously written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Citywire.
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