For Sale: Widener’s Estate—No, Not That One

The Widener estate is being sold to the highest bidder next month—but students and professors don’t have to worry about finding a new place to study and research.

The family’s 7.5-acre former mansion in Newport, R.I.—not Harvard’s flagship library—is being sold at auction by its current owner and is expected to fetch an eight-figure sum that may approach $25 million.

Both the beach front villa and Widener Library were completed in 1915 and were designed by architect Horace Trumbauer.

The estate, dubbed Miramar—meaning “look to the sea”—had gone through numerous provenances before it was sold to real estate mogul Andrew Panteleakis in 1971 for $118,000.

Panteleakis put the estate on the market two years ago, and though it drew interest, nobody was willing to pay its $25 million asking price.

“The seller has decided to use the auction as a way of bringing finality to the sale of the property,” said Michael A. Fine of Sheldon Good and Co., the real estate firm overseeing the auction. “The market will decide how much the property is worth.”

Fine said he expects the house to sell for over $10 million dollars.

Remarkable for its panoramic vista of Rhode Island Sound, the estate consists of a French neoclassical-style main residence built on five acres, a carriage house comprising 1.5 acres, and an additional acre of undeveloped land. The three parcels will be auctioned individually in a sealed bid ending Nov. 3.

“There is nothing like it on the market,” Fine said. “All great mansions at this point are in public hands, but this is a great mansion—a castle—that is in private hands and available.”

Fine said that the property will be sold as three separate parcels to increase the auction’s revenue.

The carriage house holds room for up to four apartments, and the separate acre of undeveloped land could accommodate a luxury cabin, according to a Sheldon Good and Co. press release.

The estate was originally commissioned by railway magnate George Dunton Widener, who drowned aboard the Titanic in April 1912 alongside his 27-year-old son Harry Elkins, the Harvard graduate and book collector whose private collection helped found the library named in his memory.

George’s wife Eleanor Elkins Widener—who survived the Titanic disaster—apportioned $1.5 million to completing Miramar between 1914-1915 in addition to financing the library that bears her son’s name.

Eleanor, an art connoisseur and collector, furnished Miramar primarily with 18th-century French art and architecture. She used the house as her summer home and frequently held large social events at the estate, often welcoming distinguished military, naval, and official visitors.

In 1915—the same year the library and estate were completed—she married then Harvard geography professor Alexander Hamilton Rice. She spent the rest of her life globe-trotting and financing philanthropic institutions including the Red Cross before she died in 1937.

The Miramar also served as a retreat house and boarding school for several different owners before it was purchased by Panteleakis in 1971.