After lingering on the market for a year, Tick Hall, the gorgeous estate owned by TV personality Dick Cavett and wife Martha Rogers Cavett, is getting a major discount. The estate was first listed in 2017 at $62 million, but as Labor Day weekend of the following year rolls around, the price is being cut by $13 million, a decrease of 22 percent.
Now asking $48 million, the home is “more in line with where this [property] should trade,” agent Gary dePerisia told Mansion Global, acknowledging that the original price was aggressive.
Even with the reduction, the Montauk estate at 176 Deforest Road will likely be difficult for Cavett to part with. When he originally listed it in 2017, he told the Wall Street Journal that putting the home up for sale was one of the hardest things he’s ever done.
Originally built in the 1880s by the renowned architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the 7,000-square-foot home known as “Tick Hall” stands on 20 acres on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. When Cavett and his former wife bought the property in 1968, it was in need of repair, but it eventually became a stunning and beloved place to escape and recharge during Cavett’s hectic career as a TV show host in New York City.
However, in 1997, a fire wiped out the historic home — a tragedy that spurred Cavett and his now ex-wife, Carrie Nye, to rebuild it. Without house plans, the couple used photos and forensics to come as close as possible to the original structure. The entire undertaking has been memorialized in a documentary film called “From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall.” (You can view a clip of that film here.)
Flash forward: Cavett has since remarried, and continued to love the Montauk treasure over the years. But having passed the 80-year mark, the writer and talk-show host told the WSJ that it’s time for a new chapter in his life.
A slideshow from Architectural Digest also shows the painstaking effort Cavett and Nye took to recreate the home as closely as possible to its original form. Given the woodwork, detail and furnishings, that was no easy task. No wonder it inspired a documentary.
The listing is held by Tim Davis and Karen Kelley of Corcoran, whose listing notes describe how the property includes 900 feet of ocean frontage in the Montauk Moorlands, bordered by 190 acres of oceanfront parkland and an additional 2,200 feet of pristine coastline.
A private path winds to an oceanfront cove known, naturally, as Cavett’s Cove. There’s also access to miles of equestrian trails, a freshwater pond, a swimming pool and a trail to the beach. The property all told spans 20 acres, which remain after Cavett sold 77 acres for $18 million to a conservancy group in 2008.
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