The Real Story of Grey Gardens

Most prestigious club in the nation. The Maidstone is off the narrow 2 lane, Montauk Highway in East Hampton Grey Gardens, a hidden American treasure, is a few right turns away among towering trees. Like its lengthy history, a fierce woman owners.

The six comma 652 square foot, Lilypond Lane and West End Road. Gray gardens, shingle clad front, sage green shutters, diamond cut arts and craft style windows and lush gardens may be familiar from the Macy's brothers, 1975 filth and raccoon bone documentary. This may be your first national treasure visit.

The deteriorating mansion almost fell beneath high society dropouts, Big Eddy and Little Edie Vale, aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and their 52 cats. Despite numerous tales, the house thrived at its worst, beyond their grunger. The mansions walls teach life's ups and downs. Grey Gardens started as an Atlantic Ocean property before becoming Ascension Hollywood starlet in a luxury zip code.

Gardens was speculated before construction, but its cinematic premiere made it famous. F Bot 3 W End road two years after 1895. Margaret Bag Phillips and Stanhope. Phillips hired Joseph Greenleaf or to build their ideal. After land title complications, delayed development, Mr. Phillips died suddenly, leaving his wife considerable fortune. Missus Phillips burned her husband's bones before an examination, sparking aristocratic New York City speculation.

The 1901 New York Times said that Mister Phillips brothers accused her of exploiting her late husband for wealth. The court addressed the East Hampton properties land concerns, allowing her to construct the mansion in the early 1900s. Was sold to coal company President Robert C Hill in 1913. Miss Anna Gilman Hill, an accomplished gardener, rapidly turned their new vacation house into a lush haven. She surrounded the climbing rose lavender flocks and delphinium garden with beautiful Spanish concrete walls.

Grey Gardens had pastel dunes, cement walls and sea mist. Big and little Eddy Bale, who made it famous, brought it from the hills in 1923 after 10 years. Vigidi was born in 1895 to a rich judge. Wife Major John. Junior upheld the French nobility mystique from Gilded Age pride. Big Eddy's siblings were twin sisters Michelle and Rob Bouvier, Big Brother William. Sergeant Bouvier, who died of alcoholism in 1929, and small brother John Blackjack Verne Abouvier 3. La Salla Onassis, East Hampton home and their Manhattan family house on the Carlisle Hotel site where their residence. Big.

A superb singer and pianist was advised to marry Big Ed. 22, Married 36 year old Felon Bayle senior. Her father's legal partner. In 1917, the Bills moved into an Upper East Side apartment with a full crew including chauffeurs. See their 1920s car in front of Grey Gardens. Born Little Edie, 1917 fell in. JR1920 Bouvier, 1922 Grey Gardens was bought in 1923, shortly after their youngest was born. Big Idiotord Grey Gardens freedom. Her family spent most summers and weekends there. Big Eddy's bohemian inclinations increased at Grey Gardens, embarrassing her husband after partying in the early 1930s,

Vigidi hired a chef, chauffeur, 2 housekeepers, and a governess, according to census statistics. Meanwhile, her family boarded Little Edie at Miss Porter's the Connecticut finishing. Her cousin's Onassis and attended when she was 13 and attending Spence, a Manhattan girls, amid 1930s graduate Edie debuted at the Pierre Hotel dinner with other wealthy young ladies.

Edie was beautiful, intellectual and loved reading, theatre and acting like her mother. She was scolded for these weaknesses and taught that her marriage ability was her finest quality because she needed a mate to. In the 1940s, she visited her mother in East Hampton and Palm Beach from Manhattan. She likes excess.

The Interior secretary's affair with Captain Julius. Captain Krug. Big Edie struggled while Little Eddie threw. Felon senior divorced her by Telegraph in 1946, giving her Grey Gardens ownership and child maintenance, but no alimony.

In 1940, her mother died at her. 'S wedding. Her father chastised her for dressing as an opera. When Major John Vernon Bouvier Junior died in 1948. His money had fallen and Big 80s twin sisters got most of his estate while her sons received. Grey Gardens personnel couldn't be paid on her $300.00 monthly budget for herself in Little Edie, now $4500. This home would die early in the 1950s.

Big Eddy and pianist Gould Strong, who may have lived there in the 1940s, divorced up little. Edie begun her entertainment career in 1952 at the Barbizon Hotel in NYC because Big 80 couldn't support her, she missed. Broadway audition and returned to East Hampton. Each evening, perceived Grey Gardens as their paradise in an obstacle to their theatrical goals. Little Edie's father died in 1956, limiting their money.

Yet the mother daughter duo mixed in East Hampton at the sea spray in one of their favorite old haunts. They met Tom Logan, a former rodeo cowboy. Asked to live with him for. Despite his efforts, the gravel driveway was overgrown and had an abandoned automobile with a key in its ignition. Logan died of sickness or consumption on his kitchen cot in 1964, destroying a house.