The ground floor is primarily devoted to entertainment spaces. There’s a massive living room, kitchen, and formal dining room; in the basement is what Arader calls “the Helen Hayes bar,” which he says hasn’t been touched since her death.
“That’s where Marilyn Monroe, John Steinbeck, Orson Welles, and Frank Sinatra would all go to drink,” he says. “And Madonna would come over when Rosie owned it.”
There’s an en-suite bedroom on the first floor and five more upstairs, three of them en-suite. In total, the house has five full bathrooms and three partial bathrooms. O’Donnell, Arader says, “wisely” elected to put the air-handling units in the building’s widow’s watch, while the kitchen, he says, is another “Rosie O’Donnell masterpiece, with wonderful, new appliances.”
The Grounds
No less (if not more) important, Arader says, he put close to $2 million into the landscaping.
The house sits on 1.2 acres, and Arader—whose first job was working as a tree surgeon (“I guess I switched to art because I kept cutting my leg with a chainsaw,” he says)—has a passion for rare trees. Every six months, he would take an order of “60 to 70 trees that would be driven across the country by my nurseryman,” he says.
The estate now includes redwoods, sequoias, spruces, hemlocks, and dozens of other species that thrive outside their native habitats with “intelligent irrigation,” Arader says. “I’ve had about an 85 percent success rate.” The secret, he says, is watering the trees only twice a week—30 minutes at a time, so it saturates the ground, “and the roots go down, not out.”
Along with the rose garden, the property contains a swimming pool and pool house, rolling lawns, and views of the Hudson River.
Given the $2 million that Arader says he put into the landscaping, plus the $6 million he says he initially paid for the property, the $4.75 million price tag might give someone pause—particularly because, he says, “The chandeliers come with it and, if someone asks me nicely, a lot of the furniture will, too.”
“It’s worth much more, but I’ve done extremely well,” explains Arader. “I’ve had my fun, and yes, cash is cash, and I’m taking a terrible whipping on it. But if someone buys this because they can say they beat Graham Arader? Then great. I’ll take my whipping.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.