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Lasata is a Native American dialect word that translates as “place of peace,” but for the socially erudite in the Hamptons and adroit real estate watchers from all over, it’s lingua franca for status. Lasata is the storied Bouvier estate in East Hampton where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill and Edith Bouvier Beale spent summers during their early youth.
Jacqueline and her immediate family lived in Rowdy Hall, a shingle cottage around the corner on Egypt Lane. But Lasata, where Major John Vernou Bouvier or “Grampy Jack”.lived—perhaps reigned is the better word—was the center of family life. The Bouviers were not the most wholesome of families, and Lasata was not literally a place of peace. But for the youngsters, the time at Lasata must have seemed like golden years. It did not continue for long, however, as the family fortune and then in the late 1930s, the family itself, disintegrated.
Before there was “Dynasty” and the Carringtons, the quiet and sometimes not so quiet dramas of the wealthy few played out on lavish estates like Lasata. The social lineage of Lasata reads like a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with scenes of innocent happiness as well as deceit, adultery and disappointment. That extravagant pre-war world of high society, where Jackie and Lee and Edie frolicked, has all but vanished now, but the venues where it all took place, the great apartments and estates, at least those that have survived, have only improved with the generations.
Lasata was built in 1917, a glorious age for the design and construction of major American estates. (It was acquired by Maude Sergeant Bouvier in 1925 with her own family money.) The grey stucco house is large and expansive but still graceful and understated, with elegant, unerringly controlled detailing. It’s a pitch-perfect synthesis of elements. The much more recent pool house is a letdown by comparison, but a minor flaw.
The property, with its vast lawn, runs from Further Lane to Middle Lane, in the heart of the East Hampton estate area. The 6.4 acres is quite generous on today’s standards, but it makes you wonder how glorious the original 12 acre estate, which had stables and paddocks, must have been.
Not many listings get us buzzed, and not since Linden, the great Southampton estate was sold a few years ago, have we seen anything of this caliber offered for sale. One of the consummate properties in the Hamptons, it is extraordinary real estate on any standard. Lasata is listed with Brown Harris Stevens at $25 million, and it seems priced right, especially when you look at all the $10 or $12 million properties that don’t have a fraction of the style.
Another important society name figured in one of the biggest real estate sales in the Hamptons over the winter. Susan Burden, widow of the patrician bibliophile, Carter Burden, sold their home on Mecox Bay in Water Mill for $34 million to Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, the influential private equity firm. Sotheby’s was the listing broker, and Brown Harris Stevens the selling broker.
The house dates from 1851, and was renovated and decorated by Mark Hampton for the Burdens after they bought it. The nearly eight acre property includes mature specimen trees and grass running down to 1,500 feet of bulkheaded waterfront.
Burden, who once turned the old maxim around by saying, “You can’t be too thin, too rich, or have too many books,” amassed an impeccable collection of 70,000 books of twentieth century American literature, dominating that field. Some had been sold or given to institutions before his untimely death, but the core collection of 35,000 is a canonical gem reflecting the highest bibliographic standards.
Burden had a career in politics as a New York City councilman, followed by one as a managing partner of the family investment firm. He started a broadcast empire, and was a life long patron of the arts. In his life as well as his real estate he represented the best of the Hamptons.