Billionaire Bill Koch may have struck out on a $100 million-plus sale in Colorado, but he’s officially scored $20 million for a Cape Cod island home he put up for sale earlier this year.
The waterfront estate was built by Paul and Bunny Mellon of the famous banking family as a summer retreat in the 1950s in Osterville, Massachusetts. An LLC with ties to Koch purchased a larger 26-acre estate that included the Mellons’ house in 2013 for $19.5 million, according to Barnstable County property records.
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The current sale is a portion of that original estate, a 7.4-acre hilltop slice on Indian Trail, which is part of the Oyster Harbors golf community, on a private island overlooking Nantucket Sound. The property features a 7,300-square-foot main home—the original Mellon home—with four bedrooms, two guest cottages with two bedrooms each, a beach house, a greenhouse and a studio.
The studio was once the art studio of Bunny Mellon, a landscape designer who created the White House Rose Garden. The couple, heirs to the Bank of New York Mellon family and creators of the National Gallery of Art in D.C., purchased the lot in 1948, according to property records. The Mellons hosted Hollywood stars, business moguls, world leaders, and their personal friends, John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy at the home, according to Christie’s Real International Real Estate.
“It is important to me to preserve the home the way I remembered it when I used to visit Paul and Bunny, and maintain their influence and style over the estate,” Koch said in a prepared statement when the house was listed. The buyer couldn’t be determined.
The billionaire, who is the brother of Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, listed the home in June for $23.85 with Joanna Dresser and Kelly Crosby of LandVest and Christies. It closed for $20 million just before Christmas.
Bill Koch’s ties with the area don’t end there, however. Koch, an award-winning sailor as well as the founder of Oxbow Carbon, owns several other properties in Barnstable County as well as a marina business there. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
He had previously sold another portion of the Mellon estate, and still owns an adjacent 10-acre property, which he purchased for personal use in 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“My main Cape home is next door—it is plenty big for my friends and family now,” Koch told the Journal.