Truman Capote’s Brooklyn Heights mansion on the market for record 18M dlrs

NEW YORK - Late American author Truman Capote’s home, in Brooklyn Heights, is set to become the most expensive townhouse in the borough’s history, after it was put on the market for 18 million dollars.

The mansion on 70 Willow St., which has 11 bedrooms and fireplaces and where Capote wrote his most famous books, has been put on the market for just the third time in 70 years.

The standing record for a Brooklyn house is just under 12 million dollars, set at the dizzying height of the real estate boom.

Realtors say the lavish, 18-room Willow St. home is expected to top that, and that brokers have already lined up several showings for international buyers and well-heeled locals wanting a shot at the historic home.

With parking for four cars, a mural copied from the Kennedy White House, a back porch and a garden like something out of a Southern estate, the mansion is touted as the finest house in the borough’s finest neighbourhood.

“It’s like living in a country estate in the middle of New York City,” the New York Daily News quoted Karen Heyman, the Sotheby’s broker selling the property.

“It takes your breath away the minute you walk in,” she described.

Built in 1839 and now in the hands of a media entrepreneur, the house was owned in the 1950s by Broadway art director Oliver Smith, who designed the famous sets for “Guys and Dolls” and “West Side Story”.

Capote said he got Smith blitzed on martinis to persuade his friend to rent him the house’s garden apartment from 1955 to 1965.

There, amid the grand Greek Revival columns and crystal chandeliers, the eccentric writer dreamed up iconic New York party girl Holly Golightly from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

He also wrote “In Cold Blood’, his famous “non-fiction” novel, at the mansion.

Capote would throw extravagant parties when Smith left town, often bragging that he owned the entire property. (ANI)