SELLERS: Tracy Pollan and Michael J. Fox
LOCATION: Sharon, CT
PRICE: $4,250,000
SIZE: (approx.) 5,000 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: After first and unsuccessfully attempting to unload it at $4.8 million, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan have re-listed their spectacularly private and picturesquely pastoral Connecticut country estate with a substantially lower asking price of $4.25 million. Property records aren’t clear exactly when the Pollan-Foxes purchased the scenic property or how much they paid for the 72.37-acre spread that’s just outside the charming Litchfield County community of Sharon. However, current listing details along with an Architectural Digest article from 2000 show the approximately 5,000-square-foot shingle and stone cottage, at the tail end of an exceptionally long tree-lined drive with six bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, was custom built for the couple in 1997, shortly after the Emmy, Golden Globe and Grammy winning actor was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease.
The central living and dining room, a capacious 40-foot-long double-height space ringed by and upper level gallery, is anchored at one end by a massive fieldstone fireplace while several sets of French doors open the room to an inviting veranda that spans almost the full width of the back of the house with panoramic views over the verdant valley below. A handful of more intimately scaled rooms surround the great room and include a family room with a built-in entertainment unit as well as a small library that features a couple of stained glass windows and ceiling-height Arts & Crafts-style bookshelves balanced against a minimalist-minded stone-faced fireplace. The homey country kitchen features a top-quality craftsmanship and appliances, a multi-colored basket weave pattern painted wood floor that echoes the custom-woven Swedish Arts and Craft-style rug in the Great Room, and a sunny dining area. Just off the kitchen a screened porch makes a perfect spot to spend time on humid and buggy New England summers and conveniently opens to a stone-walled kitchen garden and elegantly spare rectangular swimming pool simply set into a flat patch of lawn with open farm field and mountain views. The property additionally provides open meadows dotted with mature shade trees, a renovated and postcard ready 18th-century horse barn, fenced paddocks, a guest apartment above a detached three-car garage, and a charming fishing shack near the shore of a multi-acre pond with dock.
Several members of Pollan’s family own properties nearby — as do Kyra Sedgewick and Kevin Bacon — and since the fall of 2007 Pollan-Foxes have additionally maintained a 7,000-plus-square-foot shingle-sided and gambrel-roofed mansion in the historic, wealthy and somewhat unsung Hamptons community of Quogue they scooped up in October 2007 for $6.3 million.
Listing photos: William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty
