After a Decade on the Market, the Historic Hamptons Windmill Still Waiting for a Buyer To Breeze In

You haven’t missed your chance to buy a historic windmill in the Hamptons.

The place in Amagansett, NY, where Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller escaped to avoid the press in the 1950s is still available for $12 million.

“The nature of the Hamptons is a funny animal. Sometimes, you put a listing on the market and it sells in two weeks. This listing is a special listing. It’s a one of a kind,” says listing agent Bobby Rosenbaum, with Douglas Elliman–Bridgehampton.

The two-bedroom, one-bathroom windmill has been on and off the market since 2013. Its current listing stretches more than three years.

Now that a decade has passed, nothing much has changed beyond the price.

“The owner is patient,” says Rosenbaum.

Built in 1830, the windmill sits on a 5.45-acre parcel of land with plenty of development potential. That potential is what makes the price tag prodigious.

“It’s developable but not dividable without a variance. You can build up to a 20,000-square-foot residential home, so the value is built in because of that,” he says. “You have the ability to build a beautiful home with panoramic views.”

The $12 million list price represents a $500,000 increase.

“The owner feels that this property has a lot of value, and he’s correct because 5-acre properties in Amagansett are rare—and have become even rarer,” Rosenbaum says. “I’m anticipating a lot of action on this property because inflation has caught up to the asking price.”

Rosenbaum compares the increase in the asking price to the price of another commodity.

“If you look at the price of gold when the owner bought the property, the price of gold was about $35 an ounce,” he says. “Now gold is $2,000 an ounce, so the value of the dollar shrinks over time.”

Some of the mechanicals of the windmill are still part of the three-story structure.

“It’s magical and mystical. It’s serene. It is bucolic. It is peaceful. It is private. It is really close to nature,” Rosenbaum says of the property. “There are not any deer fences on this property, and a lot of the wildlife roams in the forest on the property.”

While the potential for a megamansion lurks when the property eventually sells, Rosenbaum says he hopes the history remains.

“I don’t think anybody would want to destroy the windmill. However, the owner is aware that once it sells, anybody can do anything they want to the property that they bought,” Rosenbaum says. “It is not a contingency for the sale, but I would be shocked and disappointed if somebody wants to raze that windmill.”

He believes the windmill could remain on the property as part of a larger design plan.

“With proper land planning and intelligent architectural design, you could keep that windmill in place and use it as a pool house and integrate a new home on the property so the windmill does not seem out of place and would enhance the whole property,” he says. “There are other homes that have been built with superficial windmills as part of their design. This is the real McCoy.”

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