The teenager, then known as William Martin Joel, lived on a half-acre property in the working-class suburb of Hicksville. His family was so limited that they did not own a television. He took a back-breaking job dredging oysters for minimum wage.
The dredger crisscrossed the waters of Long Island Sound, including a comma-shaped bay that fronts some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. A stately brick mansion could be seen from the ship.
‘Rich bastards,’ he thought to himself. “I would never live in a house like that.”
Decades and dozens of Top 40 hits later, in 2002, Billy Joel (Oysterman turned Piano Man) purchased that very mansion on Center Island.
Joel, 75, has told the story over and over again, even using profanity. Probably because it’s so unbelievable. “The appropriate word is ‘absurd.'” I grew up in Hicksville in a house on 4 acres. And I rode my bike up here and looked at all the rich people and badmouthed them,” he says.
On Wednesday, a team of real estate agents and publicists acting on his behalf held an open house for the sale. List price is $49.9 million.
The several-hour event was by invitation only, with high-end real estate agents arriving by speedboat. Potential buyers were 0.1%, and at least one billionaire and a representative from a Brussels-based hedge fund were scheduled to visit. Among Joel’s former neighbors are Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity and one of the heirs to the Exxon Mobil fortune, his staff said.
It was a world apart from the crowd Mr. Joel had once inhabited, and his identity and music were closely tied to Long Island’s working class.
Hicksville, where he grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, is less than 15 miles from his mansion. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his mother sent him to a nearby store to rent a television. He returned with the television on a trolley, his biographer Fred Schreers explained.
Schruers said his family didn’t have a television, but they did have a beat-up Leicester upright piano, and his mother urged him to take lessons. Joel said he wanted to go out and play with his friends, but he hated practicing, so he learned to imitate Beethoven’s style to the point where his mother thought he was following the score. .
When he first purchased the property, he sought to embed its humble musical roots by naming it “MiddleSea.” It is named for its location in the middle of the ocean, with Oyster Bay on one side and a cold and jutting sandbar on the other. Spring Harbor is on the other side. But it also serves a dual purpose, referring to the middle C note, which is the first key piano beginners learn.
“If I hadn’t been able to take piano lessons, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford a skyscraper like this. So I named it after the first note I learned on the piano, C.” he explained.
The 26-acre high-rise includes a main house, a beach house, and two guesthouses, totaling 18 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, as well as three pools, a bowling alley, and a helipad.
I can’t express the size of the site in words, so I walked from one end of the property line to the other. It took me 9 minutes and 3 seconds at a brisk walk. That’s about the time it takes to walk seven blocks in Manhattan.
Joel’s property manager is quick to point out that not only Joel but his guests also get around in motorized carts.
At the edge of the property is over 600 feet of sandy beach.
“It’s rare to find a property with 200 feet of beach” in the area known as Long Island’s “Gold Coast,” said Emmett Laffey, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. property.
Although the singer still owns other properties on Long Island, including a home in Sag Harbor, his base is now in Florida, where his two youngest daughters, ages 7 and 9, attend school. “When the kids start school, it’s like they’re trapped,” Joel says.
That’s one of the reasons he’s selling so well. There are also more mundane concerns. It’s a tax.
The annual real estate tax bill is $567,686, which is higher than the median sales price for a single-family home in the United States. “It’s not cheap, let’s face it,” he said. “As a result of my success, I became quite wealthy financially.”
The house was first put on the market last year. Renovations are still underway, including replacing all bathroom fixtures, installing brand new marble floors, renovating the kitchen, and redoing the brick walkways and patios, with some rooms covered in tarpaulins and well-maintained. I couldn’t see it, Laffey said. After renovations were completed, it was taken off the market last month and relisted at a price increase from $49 million to $49.9 million.
A “high-rise open house” was appropriate for selling real estate in this price range. Costumed waiters served shrimp and goat cheese hors d’oeuvres as classical music blared from speaker systems throughout the facility.
A group of high-level agents who arrived by speedboat to tour the site saw it for the first time from the shore, the same way Joel first saw it. However, the difference was that Mr. Joel was on an Oiki boat, and the guests were clutching luxury wallets. .
One of the women in the group realized she had left her Dior handbag on the docks, so she took off her heels and ran back barefoot. The group stopped to take photos against the backdrop of the shimmering water.
“This is very nice,” said one. “It’s amazing,” said another, as the mansion on the hill came into focus. “What a view,” said a third.
The one they toured was actually the one that had been restored. Chad Nuzzi, Joel’s property manager, discovered a 1913 blueprint and plans signed by railroad magnate George Brock in a hidden closet. The land was called Yeadon, which Joel and his staff believed was a reference to Bullock’s ancestral village in England, and was divided into four parcels.
Over the next few years, Joel said he worked to rebuild the original land and rebuild it to Gatsbian proportions. (The trust that purchased the original parcel in 2002 is listed as “F. Scott LLC,” which may refer to F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
Joel is living a luxurious life there. As fans of the working-class nostalgia in his songs filled Madison Square Garden again and again, Mr. Joel flew from a helipad to the concert venue.
Not bad for a former Oysterman.
“I love this property. I don’t think there is another property as beautiful as this one,” he said. “There’s that Gatsby feeling that I dreamed about when I was little. You’ll regret it a little when you hand over the keys.”
Kitty Bennett contributed to the research.
