See inside Taylor Swift's $80M houses, mansions and lofts

Table Of Content

• More Must-Reads From TIME
• Taylor Swift Needs to Become Other People
• This is High Watch in Rhode Island, Taylor Swift's seaside mansion.
• What Taylor Swift’s ‘Clara Bow’ Does—And Doesn’t—Have to Do With the 1920s Superstar
• Watch Hill Seaside Estate, Rhode Island
• Taylor Swift Gives Historical Tours of Her Rhode Island Home to Friends and Family

And there’s no telling how much more she’ll conquer in the kingdom of real estate (and what new songs she’ll sing about them), amid a successful tour that Forbes estimates will make her a billionaire by the end of this year. Many fans and news outlets have inferred that the woman in question is Rebekah Harkness, a socialite, philanthropist, and patron of the ballet, who Vogue reports once owned Holiday House, the same Watch Hill, Rhode Island, mansion Swift purchased in 2013 for $17.75 million. The house sat empty on the beach until Taylor bought it in 2013 for an alleged all-cash deal of $17 million. Taylor seems to confirm that she was the house's next owner in the song, singing, "Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me." Rebekah was born in St. Louis and was married to William Hale Harkness, who was the heir to the fortune of Standard Oil.

Inside Taylor Swift's epic $17 million Rhode Island 'holiday house' - HELLO!

Inside Taylor Swift's epic $17 million Rhode Island 'holiday house'.

Posted: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

More Must-Reads From TIME

Chief Paul Gingerella of the Westerly Police Department told The Washington Post that the woman, who was detained on Monday, had visited the residence several weeks earlier and was warned by police not to return. An ecologically fragile barrier beach and protected bird sanctuary, this 1.5-mile slice of coastline is considered one of the state's hidden gems. Swift, who has in the past brought along fellow pop star Selena Gomez, has been repeatedly spotted eating eggs with hot sauce here. For those looking to experience Rhode Island as Swift does (without, perhaps, the casual procurement of beachside estates with eight fireplaces), here's your guide to what Rhode Island's press cohort insists are her favorite digs.

Taylor Swift Needs to Become Other People

The Rhode Island mansion has been the site of listening sessions and Fourth of July celebrations, including this year. Swift shared an Instagram post documenting her weekend festivities at the home, pictured are friends like Selena Gomez and the Haim sisters. Ironically, the public part of that beach is harder to find than the private parts. To the left, it belongs to Ocean House, a spectacular (and spectacularly expensive) hotel originally built 150 years ago, where celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Simpson, and the late, great Regis Philbin were seen.

This is High Watch in Rhode Island, Taylor Swift's seaside mansion.

Taylor Swift’s 12,000-square-foot beach house sits atop the highest point of the Rhode Island town, serving as the destination for her famous A-list parties (she’s known for throwing Independence Day gatherings here). With seven bedrooms, eight fireplaces, a glorious pool, and shoreline views extending 700 feet, this mansion is one of her most impressive buys. High Watch, formerly named Holiday House but locally known as the Harkness House, is an 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) home situated in Watch Hill, a historic district in Westerly, Rhode Island. A big star with a big reputation, Taylor Swift is arguably the most well-known of Rhode Island’s celebrities.

What Taylor Swift’s ‘Clara Bow’ Does—And Doesn’t—Have to Do With the 1920s Superstar

L'Officiel has listed High Watch as one of the most expensive celebrity homes in the Americas. Linker goes on to suggest that this process helps define an artist’s aesthetic, forcing them toward their greatest strengths and their most original material. For this reason, someone like Bruce Springsteen, who recorded many more songs than appeared on his most famous albums, might have been a weaker cultural presence — or so Linker argues — if he had just dumped every song he ever wrote in the laps of his most eager fans. The best work would have been lost inside the pretty good work, and the sense of Springsteen as a very specific kind of rock music legend might have been diminished. Originally constructed in the 1830s, the Hotel Chelsea is an impeccable example of Victorian Gothic architecture on the west side of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by architect Philip Hubert, the 12-story hotel on West 23rd Street quickly became a long-term housing co-op for artists, musicians, poets, and other transient types.

A Colonial-style mansion, High Watch sits on a 5-acre (2.0 ha) seafront estate that includes a private beach. The estate is situated atop Watch Hill's namesake hillock, which was used as a strategic lookout point during some battles in the history of the United States. Built in 1930, the mansion sits on the highest point in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and features 700 feet of shoreline and views of Little Narragansett Bay, according to the real-estate site Zillow. Since then, the musician has put her hard-earned, lavish home to good use by hosting numerous parties with famous friends, known as her squad.

Swift has said that her biggest mistake in creating her public image was not being forthcoming enough about how carefully crafted it was. She brought in hordes of celebrities for her famous — and perfectly Instagrammed — Fourth of July parties. She did exactly the kind of things that a modern-day Rebekah Harkness would have done. Harkness may have filled her pool with Champagne and not flamingo and unicorn pool floats, but she brought in the celebrities of her day, and she installed a dome on her lawn as a rehearsal space for her ballet company.

... as did "Orange Is the New Black" star Ruby Rose ...

The other pictures show the crew sharing some drinks, sharing a red, white and blue popsicle, and, it looks like, singing karaoke. Taylor Swift is bringing back all her different eras – including the Fourth of July party in Rhode Island. Comedian Jay Leno isn’t necessarily known for being a gilded mansion kind of guy, but he has one — Seafair, on Ocean Drive in Newport. — You can’t miss High Watch, a rambling, white clapboard 1920s “cottage” that sprawls atop the bluff that gives this town its name, just before the inflection point, as Nate McBride, a local architect, put it, of the Long Island Sound as it flows into the Atlantic Ocean. She released a rerecorded version of her third studio album “Speak Now” on Friday.

Merv Griffin’s legendary desert estate hits the market for $36M

It was the spot of her much-talked-about Fourth of July parties from 2013 to 2017, and last summer Blake Lively posted photos of herself and husband Ryan Reynolds visiting there. It says something that she’s been scrutinized this much in a town where, until a public outcry and a rash of bad press in 2016 prompted a change in policy, the Westerly Yacht Club did not allow women to be full-time members. It says something more that when Jay Leno bought a $13.5 million mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2017, nobody said a negative word about it; there was certainly no proposed Jay Leno Tax. Since Taylor Swift tends to keep her personal life fairly private these days, details about the house have been hard to come by. The eight-bedroom property, known as High Watch or Holiday House, was built on the highest point in Watch Hill and boasts over 700 feet of private beachfront. Taylor Swift bought an 11,000-square-foot estate in Rhode Island back in 2013 for a whopping $17.75 million — which she reportedly paid for in cash.

Some of them are tourist attractions, but others are still functioning vacation homes for today’s elite. It looms over East Beach and Lighthouse Road, a hulking landmark whose most notable public era, for locals of a certain age, was during the 1960s, when its owner at the time, Rebekah West Harkness, a Standard Oil heiress, became a patron of the Joffrey Ballet and then founded her own company. Dancers practiced on the lawn for more than a few summers, though when Mrs. Harkness planted a blue plastic Buckminster Fuller dome there as a practice space, the neighbors were outraged and sued to have it removed. In 2014, Swift bought not one but two adjacent penthouses in an old TriBeCa building at 155 Franklin Street, converting them into one large duplex that has a total of 10 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms, a billiards room, and an incredible sweeping staircase. Swift’s arrival brought her fans and traffic, and grumblings followed, Vulture reported.

Taylor Swift reportedly loaning RI home to Gigi Hadid, Bradley Cooper - The Providence Journal

Taylor Swift reportedly loaning RI home to Gigi Hadid, Bradley Cooper.

Posted: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Pearl was a descendant of pilgrim Edward Fuller, the House of Stuart, and Robert Burns. In a new interview, Tyler Conroy recalled sipping on Diet Cokes from Swift’s fridge, checking out her personal library filled with “Harry Potter” books and listening to her 2014 hit “Shake It Off” in her townhouse in the Tribeca neighborhood. Of course, Swift is a sometime Westerly resident with an oceanside mansion in Watch Hill. In Westerly, there's a free listening party at The United Theatre at 5 Canal St. on Friday, April 19, at 7 p.m. Celebrate the release by listening to it in its entirety in the Post Credits event space. Guests will enjoy signature cocktails and mocktails at a cash bar, plus some fun themed photo opps.

In my head, that dome looks exactly like the enormous 27-foot-tall waterslide Swift had at her 2016 extravaganza. The parallels between the two of them are strong enough that it’s hard not to hear the lyric, “Rebekah gave up on the Rhode Island set forever,” as Swift’s own feelings toward my home state. Swift put herself out there, right in plain view, just like she does in folklore and the seven albums before that.

Spanning a massive 12,000 square feet, the estate has eight bedrooms and eight fireplaces. Most recently, the singer’s former townhouse in Manhattan’s West Village — where she rented in 2016 while waiting out the renovations of her combination penthouse unit in Tribeca — listed for sale asking $17.99 million. And while she’s not busy on a very sold-out tour, she stays active when it comes to real estate. With her albums, her buzzy Eras tour for which tickets can sell for thousands and merchandise sales, the singer has amassed a net worth in the hundreds of millions. The property has been as controversial as the two-time Oscar nominee's politics. He put the house up for sale in 2017, but in December he was embroiled in a conflict with the town when he challenged his neighbor's plans to build a home on the edge of Boone Lake.

After skipping the iconic bash for several years, Taylor Swift posted pictures on Instagram on Friday of her celebrating at her Watch Hill Mansion for several of her famous pals. Unlike those who have chosen an ocean view, Woods lives on the edge of Boone Lake in Exeter. The land, not far from the Arcadia Management Area, has been owned by his family for decades. He estimated he spent 19 days at Seafair in 2019, but when he is in town, he is often spotted out and about.