373 Taconic Road gained the Bankruptcy Court's approval and closed today
/
373 Taconic Road was priced at $7.1 million but has sold for $7.250. The owners of this house have either gone to jail, fallen into bankruptcy, fled the country, or endured a combination of the three. Its tale of woe reminds me of another haunted house, the late Leona Helmsley’s Dunnellen Hall (nee Topping Hill).
Greenwich mansion with cursed history up for sale again
A Greenwich property with a history of wealthy inhabitants who saw monumental bad luck upon taking ownership is back on the market at a reduced listing.
Round Hill Manor, formerly known as Dunnellen Hall, is now available for $39 million; last spring, it was listed at $49 million, and in 2014 it was listed for $65 million. Located on more than 40 acres with a vast view of the Long Island Sound, the property has nine bedrooms, eight full bathrooms and a new propane HVAC system has individual thermostats in every room.
The property at 521 Round Hill Road in Greenwich also boasts a rather creepy history. According to the Damned Connecticut website, it was built in 1918 by financier Daniel G. Reid as a gift for his daughter. [S]he lived there without incident until 1950, but Reid’s health failed dramatically a year after the estate’s construction and he was twice committed to psychiatric care before his death in 1925.
Subsequent occupants also experienced their share of unfortunate turns of fortune: steel industry tycoon Loring Washburn went broke several years after buying the estate from Reid’s daughter, financier Jack Dick died in 1974 after being indicted for questionable financial activities, oil man Ravi Tikkoo [oil supertankers]; less than a decade later, he had also gone bust, forcing him to sell the property to Harry and Leona Helmsley who bought the property as summer home in 1983 for $11 million [“ It was the subsequent renovation work at Dunnellen Hall — and the ensuing charges of tax evasion and eventual criminal trials — which began the Helmsley’s decline which included Harry’s death and Leona’s 18-month stretch in the slammer. After serving her sentence, Leona moved in year-round, living there until her death in August 2007.”] The Helmsley estate sold the property in 2010 for $35 million, after initially listing it two years earlier for $125 million.
There’s a fun article on one of the estate’s former owner, Jack R. Dick, dead of a heart attack at 45 in 1974. Quite an interesting, perhaps a bit shady, character.
Even after this article was written, the curse continued; the estate finally sold 2,178 days after being listed for $16.5 million in November 2020.
