Thursday, November 15, 2007

C.C. Wang's Southampton Estate

SELLER: The Estate of Cheng Ching Wang
LOCATION: Gin Lane, Southampton, NY
PRICE: $11,500,000 (sale)
SIZE: 6,054 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 9.5 bathrooms,
DESCRIPTION: First class location, 2.2 very private acres with oversized heated Gunite pool and all-weather tennis court. Sleek interior boasts living room with fireplace, formal dining room, a serious cook's kitchen with breakfast area as well as 8 bedrooms with baths en-suite, including a spacious master with sitting room/office. A separate guest wing has its own living room and music room as well as private entrance.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's official. It's C.C. Wang Week at the Real Estalker. We've discussed Mister Wang's dee-luxe duplex apartment at super luxe 740 Park Avenue which was purchased from the estate by his wedding dress diva daughter Vera Wang for $23,100,000, the Pound Ridge estate available to lease for $25,000 per month, the ocean front Palm Beach estate on the market for $23,000,000, and today, thanks to a little Long Island birdie, we have the C.C. Wang Southampton estate.

Located on a prime and private 2.2 acre flag lot off Gin Lane in swanky and staid Southampton (for better or worse, East Hampton is far more glitzy), the sprawling single story 6,054 square foot house with 8 bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms appears from property records to have been purchased by C.C. Wang and his wife Florence Wu in August of 1977. Given that the Hamptons were still relatively sleepy back in the 1970s compared to the frothing scene it is nowadays, Your Mama would not be surprised to learn that the wealthy Wangs bought this weekend house for well under $1,000,000.

Put on the market shortly after Mister Wang's passing in the fall of 2006, property records reveal that it did not take long to sell the well located property which transferred to a ladee named Cline in June of 2007 for its asking price of $11,500,000.

Clearly the Wangs had a knack for buying properties in all the hoity toity hot spots of the rich and richer, and over the 30 years that they summered in sunny Southampton, the Wangs were in good, or at least very rich company on Gin Lane with the Arthur "Punch" Sulzbergers right next door, financier Felix Rohatyn down the street, and before he passed in 1997, pop art pioneer Roy Lichtenstein summered across the street and a few doors down.

The simply manicured estate sits close enough to the residents only beach at the bottom of Wyandanch Lane (one must possess an expensive parking sticker to park the Range Rover or come on a bicycle), that if the wind is blowing in the right direction the ocean waves can be heard crashing while you sunbathe nekkid next to the over sized Gunite pool or bang the little fuzzy yellow balls on the "all-weather" tennis court. Can somebody explain to Your Mama what in the world an all-weather tennis court is and who in the Hamptons plays tennis in the rain or bitter cold?

Anyhoo, like C.C.'s Pound Ridge property, his Hamptons home is filled to the rafters with white furniture. White, white, and more white. And like Mister Wang's other properties, Your Mama is less than impressed with the flat decor. It's not the mostly white color scheme, we can get behind that choice, it's the strong sense of a lack of inspiration or aspiration working itself out in these rooms. Clearly, this is a home that is lived in, hence the haphazard and pleasantly disarrayed books on the bookshelves and the computer printer on display in the family room. Houses that looked occupied are often more appealing than those that appear ripped from the pages of a decorator show house brochure. So, no babies, these are not bad rooms, they're just boring, another design crime of a different type. Except for those dee-lish-us itty bitty leopard print chairlettes flanking the fireplace and that massive Viking range in the kitchen. Those items we like.

Your Mama is just astonished that the C.C. Wangs had mountains of money and access to one of the high priestesses of New York style, and it appears they never once asked baby Vera for her thoughts and ideas on how to spice up their many high priced homes all up and down the Eastern seaboard. Well, it's a moot point now, isn't it?

Your Mama sincerely hopes that the new owners of all the C.C. Wang properties (including Miz Vera at 740 Park) hire themselves a slew of nice gay decorators to transform all the lackluster Wang real estate jewels into the sparkling gems they were built to be.

As we wrap up our week of Wang, may we offer our humble and belated condolences to the Wang family on the passing of their patriarch. We hope y'all understand that we would never intend to demean C.C. or his many endeavors and accomplishments that made him a freakishly rich man. It's all in good fun kids.

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