“This was as close to heaven as one could get on Long Island.” So says Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) when describing the mansion belonging to the Larrabee family, where she grew up with her chauffeur father, at the beginning of Billy Wilder’s beloved 1954 classic “Sabrina.” In truth, three different properties were utilized to portray the opulent seaside estate in the film. And one of them, a stunning water-struck brick and Indiana limestone affair located about 25 miles northeast of Manhattan in Rye, New York, is currently looking for a buyer!
Offered for $11 million, the historic Georgian Colonial can be found nestled along a private road at the end of a long driveway at 315 Brevoort Ln. in Greenhaven, an affluent woodsy community that became a haven for the Hollywood elite in the 1950s, earning it the nickname “the East Coast Beverly Hills.” (Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.) Repped by Christy Murphy of Sotheby’s International Realty, the listing marks the first time the tony pad has been up for grabs in over two decades, after last changing hands in 1999 for $6.475 million.
Featuring an impressive façade lined with a succession of white-trimmed windows, the manse stands on the grounds of what was once Brevoort Farm, a sprawling 200-acre homestead established by wealthy landowner Henry Brevoort in 1830. The three-story estate, commissioned by Ormsby Mitchel in 1917, replaced one of the original properties built on the premises, a baronial-style dwelling known as “The Anchorage.”
To erect the structure (which held onto The Anchorage moniker), Mitchel tapped Mott B. Schmidt, the Pratt Institute-trained architect who would famously go on to design the Sutton Place townhomes of theatrical/literary agent Elisabeth Marbury, philanthropist Anne Morgan and heiress Anne Vanderbilt, thereby transforming the primarily industrial area into the exclusive Manhattan neighborhood it is today. The Anchorage was one of Schmidt’s first major works.
