The ‘Great Love’ of a Collector of Old Mansions

SOMETIMES, your dream house finds you. That's how Richard Hampton Jenrette, a co-founder of the investment banking firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, wound up owning Edgewater, Gore Vidal's former home in Barrytown, N.Y. "It just seemed like fate," Mr. Jenrette said.

Richard Hampton Jenrette More Photos »

As he told the story on an overcast May afternoon, Mr. Jenrette, a native North Carolinian who is now 78 and retired from his business career, surveyed Edgewater - a colonnaded classical revival house built in 1820 - from the bank of the Hudson River. The house sits on a small peninsula, lined with weeping willows, just 50 yards from the river. He first saw it, he said, on a late September afternoon in 1969. "I took a drive in the country, touring old houses, using ‘Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley' as a guide," he said referring to a classic photographic history by Harold Donaldson Eberlein and Cortlandt Van Dyke Hubbard. "My last stop was Edgewater. I didn't know Gore Vidal then, so I kind of snuck down his driveway. The sun was setting. The river was rippling. Everything was lushly green. Suddenly, six majestic Doric columns loomed into view, and I saw Tara from ‘Gone With the Wind' - this Southerner's vision of a dream house. I was smitten."

He returned to New York coveting this slice of paradise but not expecting that he would ever own it. Then came the fateful coincidence. Two days later, Mr. Jenrette's friend Anthony Hail, a San Francisco decorator, called him out of the blue to report that Mr. Vidal was planning to sell Edgewater. "It's to die for - you ought to buy it!" Mr. Jenrette recalled Mr. Hail's saying.

Mr. Jenrette bought Edgewater for 5,000. He said that at the closing, which took place over a drink at Mr. Vidal's apartment in Manhattan, he was greeted at the door by Shirley MacLaine, who told him, "Gore's on the phone, but have a drink!" and poured him a vodka on the rocks. It was a thrilling end note for Mr. Jenrette, who had just seen Ms. MacLaine in the film "Sweet Charity."

When the deal was sealed, everyone was happy. "Gore bought Edgewater in 1946 for ,000, so he felt that he'd made a good sale," said Mr. Jenrette, breaking into a Cheshire Cat grin. Today, on the local tax books, it is worth an estimated million.

Edgewater wasn't Mr. Jenrette's first grand old home. In 1968, he bought the Roper House in Charleston, S.C., an 1838 Greek Revival mansion overlooking the harbor. Nor would it be his last. A self-proclaimed "house-a-holic," he has owned and restored 14 major properties, most dating back to the early 19th century, and currently has seven: Edgewater and the Roper House, two more homes in the Carolinas, one in St. Croix, and adjacent residences - a Georgian brick town house and a carriage house - on East 93rd Street in Manhattan.

Yet, it is Edgewater, in Dutchess County north of Rhinebeck, that Mr. Jenrette fondly calls "the great love of my life." He lives there from Memorial Day weekend through October, returning to his Manhattan town house two days a week.

Situated on 40 acres, Edgewater has four bedrooms, five bathrooms, an attic that has been converted into a 10,000-volume library, and two kitchens. Outside are a pool and two guesthouses.

AS a venue for entertaining, Edgewater has served Mr. Jenrette well. Among memorable visitors, he said, were Mr. Vidal with friends Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in tow for a one-time "reunion"; Truman Capote; and Yoshinobu Tokugawa, a descendant of Lord Tokugawa, a 17th-century Japanese shogun. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for whom Mr. Jenrette held a successful fund-raiser at Edgewater during her first Senate campaign, has also been a guest. "She stayed here a couple of weeks in a row - and brought her mother as a chaperone!" Mr. Jenrette recalled.

Striding through his handsome drawing room, where three arched French doors open onto a porch and a stellar river view, Mr. Jenrette pointed out period details - moldings, original glass windows, mantels and mahogany doors. A striking sofa and four side chairs with curule form legs, upholstered in royal blue brocade, were made by Duncan Phyfe. "I have one of the largest private collections of his furniture," Mr. Jenrette said matter-of-factly.

The riverside porch is a frequent haunt for Mr. Jenrette, who takes great pleasure in the panoramic views it affords of the river and the Catskill Mountains beyond. Inside, his favorite room is the light-filled Octagon Library, which has 26-foot-high ceilings and an octagon skylight. This is where Gore Vidal did most of his writing, Mr. Jenrette said. Every side of the room offers views of the river and gardens. The quiet shatters when an Amtrak train rushes by; the tracks are no more than 40 yards away. "They run about once an hour, but it doesn't bother me," Mr. Jenrette said.