Backstory: Ira Rennert's Fair Field - the Largest House in the Hamptons

The largest private home in the Hamptons cost $150 million to build, has 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, a garage for 100 cars took six years to build and is in Sagaponack.

Where in Sagaponack? It’s a good question. Most people have never seen it. The reason? The owner, billionaire Ira Rennert surrounded the home with a forest of evergreen trees after construction was completed. Unless you are invited in, its just a driveway with a gate leading into a woods. A small sign on a post out front says Fair Field.

The backstory to this property is that the local residents fought this project tooth and nail when it’s architectural plans were first approved by a building inspector. The inspector said it was a house. Living room, kitchen, bedrooms. Just on steroids. No zoning laws violated. 

Certainly it was quite horrendously visible with cranes and bulldozers during the six years of construction. It went up on a former potato farm. No trees on a potato farm. Oceanfront. And oh yes, three swimming pools, a 164 seat movie theatre, bowling alleys, pool house, children’s play house, media house, synagogue, numerous dining areas both indoors and out, featuring cuisines from a wide variety of countries.

It’s a hotel, people shouted.  A religious retreat.

“I just want that my family be able to visit me and my wife and have a place to stay in our home when they come out.” Rennert wrote in a letter to the local press while it was being constructed. It was the only comment he ever made about the project.

While other media in the area gave lots of space to those objecting to the project, Dan’s Papers took a contrarian view. I didn’t know the people. But having studied architecture in grad school at Harvard, I knew this massive and very ugly construction project would likely soon disappear behind a private forest once completed. I also pretended to interview a mythical squatter who took up residence in the place, moving around from place to place so as not to be discovered. He said it was all-right. Apparently the Rennerts were amused and appreciative of what I wrote. 

This got me, when completed, invited to a children’s party in this glorious European Renaissance compound that the Rennert’s threw for their friends. We rode on their merry-go-round, flew kites, played ball, competed in video games and enjoyed ourselves. My kids were teenagers then. I was particularly happy to meet Ingeborg, Ira Rennert’s wife, who had organized the affair.

When we arrived there, four Hummers, military vehicles now in civilian service, were parked at the cobbled roundabout entrance to the main hall at the place. Rennert had just bought the company. Later, he’d sell it to General Motors.

Rennert’s business over the years has for the most part been to buy distressed mining and manufacturing companies, built 100 years ago when there were no pollution laws, invest cash, make them competitive and most important, bring them up to 21st century environmental standards. Not the most popular kind of work. But somebody has to do it. So this he did.  And now, at 91, his kids and his kids kids and maybe great-grandkids come to visit.

Have a East End real estate story? Want to share? Text us at 516-527-3566. We’ll call you back, and then write it up for this weekly column. –Dan