NEW YORK — Actor Richard Gere’s historic Connecticut mansion has been razed to make way for a subdivision, months after he sold the home once owned by Paul Simon and Edie Brickell and decamped to Europe.
Architectural salvage expert Reggie Young, who worked to save some of the home’s stunning details from when it was built in the 1930s, confirmed the demolition to People.
“We recently checked in, and the house has been taken down,” Young told the outlet. “We are grateful that the buyers allowed us time to salvage and get everything out.”
The proof was in the aerial view that People obtained showing a bare spot scraped down to the dirt where the 8,525-square-foot mansion once stood.
Gere bought the six-bedroom, seven-bath home from the musicians for $10.8 million in 2022 after it had bounced on and off the market. Simon and Brickell had lived there for just under 20 years and sold it for nearly $6 million less than they had paid, according to CT Insider.
Gere had intended to convert the bulk of the 32-acre estate into a farm, but instead sold it to a developer late last year and moved to Spain with his wife, Alejandra Silva, to be closer to her family.
Built in 1938 and designed by architect Harold Reeve Sleeper, the Georgian-style estate was chock full of period architectural details, many of them rescued by Young’s historic-preservation firm, Hudson Valley House Parts. Together he and Green Circle Auctions saved a host of historical features from the wrecking ball.
Young’s take included a Greek revival front portico, a carved limestone mantel, steel midcentury bay windows with a nautical motif, the home’s full entryway and an entire cerused oak library, right down to the bowed fireplace and the built-in shelves paneling the walls. There were also sets of French doors and antique bluestone. All are now being sold for use in other restoration projects.
Nonetheless, Young was sorry to see the 87-year-old stately Colonial go.
“It’s a real shame the house is being torn down,” he told Realtor.com. “Once the stuff is gone, it’s never coming back.”
That sentiment was keenly felt by Simon’s daughter, Lulu Simon, who blasted Gere upon learning he’s unloaded the place she called “my childhood home” onto a developer rather than preserving it as she said he’d promised.
“Just in case anyone was wondering if I still hate Richard Gere — I do!” she wrote on her Instagram Stories in July. She also posted a portrait of the white-haired “Pretty Woman” star’s younger self surrounded by winsome doggies, along with the wish that he’d be haunted by the dead pets she’d had to bury there over the years “until you descend into a slow and unrelenting madness.”
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