‘Sex and the City’ Writer Candace Bushnell lists Victorian farmhouse in Connecticut for $1.4M
Though she created a vision of Manhattan that made an entire generation want to move to the big city and sip cosmos, “Sex and the City” writer Candace Bushnell also has experience in a more laid-back country lifestyle. The Journal recently toured her historic Victorian farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, which is currently listed for $1.365 million. Bushnell said she’s an old house lover who grew up antiquing, so when she saw the circa 1830 home in 2005, she couldn’t help spending $661,500 on it, even though she admits she “could barely afford it.” Clearly a good investment, the three-acre property has an apple orchard, barn, salt water pool, and pool house, as well as original moldings and floorboards.
The 1,469-square-foot main home has three bedrooms. The colorfully chic living/dining space, with its charming fireplace and window seat, is painted the same blue hue as Bushnell’s Manhattan apartment. In the summer of 2015, she listed her Greenwich Village co-op for $2.645 million, getting just below the asking price a couple months later. This past February, she picked up a much more modest co-op on East 74th Street for $770,000.
What’s now a large, open kitchen was once both a kitchen and potting area. Bushnell redid the space, outfitting it with slate floor tiles, a tin ceiling, floor-to-ceiling built-in cabinets, and a central island with a wine fridge.
The author told the Journal that she wrote four of her books in the house–“The Carrie Diaries,” “Summer in the City,” “One Fifth Avenue” and “Killing Monica”–choosing to work in the sitting room (pictured above), standing at the kitchen counter, or in the pool house.
The pool house’s Victorian porch overlooks the 30-by-40-foot saltwater pool.
Inside the pool house (which is also used as a guest house) is a large, open entertaining space complete with a cozy stone fireplace, a wall of built-ins backed by wainscoting, and a full country kitchen with 10-seat dining table. Bushnell said when she added the pool house she wanted to keep “the Victorian farmhouse feel with a loft interior and a flexible space.”
Underneath the pool house is a two-car garage (there’s also a separate two-car garage with a second floor on the property) and additional storage space. There’s an outdoor shower, apple orchard (Bushnell makes a lot of applesauce), barn, and rose garden. Overall, Bushnell spent around $750,000 on renovations to the property, which includes adding two mature weeping birch trees and enlisting landscape designer John Pieper to add stonework and gorgeous plantings.
Despite the fact that Roxbury is a popular spot for creatives (Walter Matthau, playwright Arthur Miller, sculptor Alexander Calder, and author Frank McCourt have all called the village home), Bushnell said she’s selling to move closer to her friends in the Hamptons: “So many of my friends who used to live in the city moved out here, and I started coming out here to visit them, and I fell in love with the town. So I found a sweet little farmhouse.”
[Listing: Mini Estate in Roxbury, CT by Maria Taylor and Carolyn Klemm of Klemm Real Estate]
[Via WSJ]
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Photos courtesy of Klemm Real Estate
