Backstory: Billy Joel Sells a House in Oyster Bay

Originally built in 1912 by millionaire railroad magnate George Bullock, it stands on 26 waterfront acres, occupies 20,000 square feet, has a main house, a beach house, a guest house, a gate house, a dock, a boat ramp, a swimming pool and even a bowling alley. Floors are marble throughout and there is a grand staircase. Also five bedrooms and 11 baths.

Oyster Bay and Glen Cove were where some of the richest men in America built their homes. In the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his book The Great Gatsby about them and their Gold Coast owners.

At the time Billy Joel purchased this property in 2002, he told me he really only did it because he had a summer job clamming in the bay as a teenager and there it was, a home he could never afford, and even if he could he’d never be accepted in that community anyway. But then his music made it possible and decades later he went ahead and did it.

He told me this at the home he’d recently bought in East Hampton for himself and wife Christie Brinkley. Some of his 40 top 10 hits celebrated the working men of Long Island, particularly the oystermen, who were forced out of the community by a politician named Robert Moses who’d built suburbia, Jones Beach and the great highways that took the crowds to it. Pleasure craft yachts pushed out the baymen’s livelihoods.

He’d really bought his home out east where fishermen and baymen still worked the sea. Think of his song “Downeaster Alexa.”

He also told me that late one night, when he and Christie were in the bedroom looking out at Oyster Bay, they were shocked to see numerous small boats with tourists looking through binoculars at them. At these two famous people. He was never very comfortable after that in having bought the Bullock mansion. As a result, for long periods of time as the years passed he did not even spend time there, much preferring life in a brand new Sag Harbor home he’d renovated amid all the boats docked in that town.

He also was building, and still does build, these mahogony picnic boats of his own design at a boatyard on Shelter Island nearby. And his collection of motorcycles for a long time was housed in the two-car garage of his Sag Harbor home.

On the other hand, later in life, he did begin to enjoy the Oyster Bay property more and began spending more time there. The home had been named “Yeadon.” Joel renamed it “MiddleSea,” as it was on a peninsula between Cold Spring Harbor and Oyster Bay, but also because “Middle C” was the first note he learned to play on the piano.

There is a backstory to this sale. When he bought “Yeadon” many of the buildings on the property – the gate house, the guest house, the beach house – much of it had been sold off. It was down to about 14 acres. Joel purchased those pieces, brought them back to life and restored the home to its original grandeur. It took 20 years. It’s now back as the treasure it is. The sale was of the main house only. The other houses will be sold separately.

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