(Photo
by Emma McIntyre/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights
Management)
Swifties know its grand staircase, its gardens and its endless hallways by heart, even if most of them have never set foot on Long Island. The castle where Taylor Swift filmed one of her most famous music videos has just gone under the hammer, and the winning bid is as dramatic as the video itself.
In short
- Oheka Castle, the estate where Taylor Swift filmed “Blank Space” in 2014, drew a winning bid of $72 million at an auction held on Tuesday.
- The pending buyers say they plan to preserve the castle, but a court still has to approve the sale.
- Built for financier Otto Kahn, the 127-room estate also served as a model for Xanadu in “Citizen Kane.”
The castle from ‘Blank Space’
In 2014, Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York, was the primary filming location for the video of “Blank Space,” the single in which Swift plays a jealous lover in a fairytale mansion. It joins a short list of homes forever tied to her music, like Taylor Swift’s former Beverly Hills bungalow where she wrote ‘1989’.
A $72 million auction
According to The Real Deal, the winning bid came at a live auction at The Dominick in New York City, run by the Modlin Group and Concierge Auctions. Seven bidders took part. The pending buyers are Ronald Browning and Paul Alflen, partners at Gold Coast Property & Estate Management, and Alflen told Long Island Business News that they plan to preserve the castle.
The sale follows a long financial saga. Court documents cited by The Real Deal show the property owed $64 million to creditors, and the lender was allowed to go ahead with a foreclosure auction after an entity tied to longtime owner Gary Melius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Inside a 127-room estate
Oheka was built from 1914 to 1919 for banker Otto Kahn, with architects Delano & Aldrich and grounds designed by the Olmsted Brothers. Today it spans roughly 113,000 square feet and 127 rooms on 23 acres, with a 72-by-32-foot ballroom under 24-foot ceilings and a library with hand-restored faux bois walls.
Melius bought the estate in 1984 for $1.5 million and spent more than $40 million restoring it across two periods of ownership. It now operates as a hotel, restaurant and wedding venue, and ABC7 New York reports that it will continue to operate as usual. “Oheka Castle is an estate that simply could not be replicated today,” auctioneer Adam Modlin said. Few celebrity-linked homes have that kind of pull, apart from places like George Clooney’s Lake Como villa.
The limit
The $72 million figure is a winning bid, not a closed sale. The deal still needs approval from the federal bankruptcy court, with a confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday. The offering also includes a neighboring five-acre plot with approved plans for a 95-unit condominium building, and the buyers have not said whether they intend to build it.
For more of Swift’s world, see why her gold nails are fall’s most elegant manicure.
The bottom line
A century after Otto Kahn built it and twelve years after Taylor Swift made it famous to a new generation, Oheka Castle is about to change hands. If the court signs off, its next chapter will be written by new owners who say they want to preserve one of the most spectacular homes on Long Island.
