Jackie Gleason’s circular “mothership” mansion in Westchester is on the market for $12M
Jackie Gleason photo via Wikimedia Commons
“Honeymooners” star and comedy legend Jackie Gleason kept an architecturally remarkable round house in Westchester County, using it as an escape while filming the iconic sitcom; now it’s for sale as part of an estate listed for $12 million, the New York Post reports. Gleason was a UFO lover who referred to the home, which is circular inside and out as “The Mothership.”
Built in 1959, this unique 3,950-square-foot house sits on an eight-acre estate comprised of three buildings and two in-ground pools. The property starts with a long wooded drive. The main “mothership” is a two-bedroom structure 50 square feet in diameter and completely round.
Enter via a spherical foyer, and you ‘ll find a private library and a marble spiral staircase beyond.
Made for entertaining a galaxy of stars, the home has two bars, at least one Italian marble fireplace and a cardroom. Gleason’s guests included just such a galaxy including the actor’s drinking and golfing buddy, then-President Richard Nixon.
In the master bedroom there’s a round bed with an overhead TV. Of course, there’s a round shower in the master bath.
100 yards from the main house is a cottage (aka “Space Ship” per the listing) with a kitchen, fireplace and bath, also circular in design.
Gleason designed the home himself at the height of his TV fame. Constructed by a shipbuilder inside an airplane hangar, it was then disassembled and brought to the site. It took five years and $650,000 to build. There are two other homes on the property. Trusses hold the house up; there are no supporting crossbeams because those would have had right angles.
The Bed-Stuy-born Gleason sold the property to his then-employer CBS several years later. It changed hands two more times before being purchsed by the current owner, a retired orthodontist, for $150,000 in 1976.
Gleason said he made the home entirely circular because he wanted it to be “like a musical note that never ends.”
[Listing: 196 Furnace Dock Road by Margaret Bailey, Howard Payson and Jacqueline Campanelli for Keller Williams]
RELATED:
- Derek Jeter lists lakefront ‘castle’ with four kitchens and a Statue of Liberty replica for $15M
- Go off-the-grid glamping at the Catskills’ Eastwind Hotel
- Hamptons windmill once rented by Marilyn Monroe is asking $55K for the entire summer
- Muppet set designer’s Catskills ‘tower house’ is a playful sculpture you can live in, for $1.2M
Images courtesy of Keller Williams.
