Derek Jeter’s Upstate New York Castle Can Now Be Your Home
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – A quirky, castle-like compound owned by retired New York Yankees superstar Derek Jeter in the quaint village of Greenwood Lake, N.Y., once a fashionable Upstate New York summer resort community that attracted the likes of Greta Garbo, Babe Ruth and Gypsy Rose Lee, is now available to be someone else’s home as long as they can stomach the monarchical $14.75 million asking price. A careful parse of tax records indicates the five-time World Series champion, now CEO and part owner of the Miami Marlins, acquired the two-parcel property in two transactions that totaled $1.625 million. The first recorded in October 2002 for $425,000, the second in January 2005 for $1.2 million and, as noted by The New York Post , it’s not such a terrific surprise Jeter bought the estate given it has a familial connection. As the adopted son of John and Julia Tiedemann, who purchased the property in 1952, ’s grandfather Sonny Connor was raised on the idiosyncratic idyllic waterside spread.
Located about 45-miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan and known to locals as Tiedemann Castle, the just over four-acre compound’s various residences and outbuildings contain a total of at least eight bedrooms and a dozen bathrooms in nearly 13,000 square feet. A 2009 report in the Times Herald-Record indicated the retired shortstop “ invested more than $3 million in the property,” which resulted in unquestionably sumptuous if tastefully bland interiors that arguably resemble a generic suburban macmansion more than an aristocratic 100-year old castle.
Originally built in the early 1900s by New York City doctor Rudolph H.E. Gudewell, the ruggedly stone-faced three-story main house opens to intimate entry vestibule that steps down to a vast entrance gallery and stair hall. In addition to a cozy study, an ample office suite with private terrace and half of a dozen bedrooms, including two master suites, there are numerous sitting rooms, dining areas and living spaces throughout the house. A large, expensively outfitted kitchen on the top floor opens to a dining area and a cozy sitting room with fireplace while, on the lowest level, a games room, a paneled dining room trimmed in brocade wallpaper, and a window-lined semi-circular family room that’s nearly 35 feet in diameter are serviced by a second, even larger and equally well-equipped kitchen with two work islands and terrace access.
All together there are a total of four indoor kitchens on the property plus an outdoor kitchen and lounge area with outdoor fireplace. The walled and gated estate also offers a pool house with wet bar that opens to a pie-shaped infinity-edge swimming pool perched above waterfall that tumbles into a picturesque private lagoon; a two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom lakeside guesthouse of around 2,000-square feet with a whimsical lighthouse-style turret; a boat house along the property’s 700 feet of pristine shoreline; and, unexpectedly standing under the shade of mature trees, a proudly patriotic replica of the Statue of Liberty.
One of baseball’s highest-paid baseball players who hauled in $265 million in salary over his 20 year career with the Yankees, Jeter lives primarily in a more than 30,00-square-foot custom-built mega-mansion with seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms on three waterfront parcels in the prosperous Davis Islands area of Tampa, Fla., where, to the chagrin of at least one of his nearby neighbors, last year he received a variance to install opaque, eight-foot tall driveway gates to help screen the massive residence from looky-loos.
Listing photos: Wright Bros. Real Estate
