The 15.65-acre Ziff estate reaches from the Atlantic Ocean to Intracoastal Waterway, dominating this aerial view of Manalapan north of the Boynton Inlet. Photo/Bing Maps
By Christine Davis
People born under the astrological sign Gemini are said to love to talk, but when it comes to Manalapan’s Gemini, the Ziff family’s 15.65-acre compound at 2000 S. Ocean, mum’s the word, except word is out that the property is on the market for $195 million.
Gemini the compound, with its quiet yet glamorous mystique, can’t help but garner attention.
The 12-bedroom main house, which was reconstructed in 2003, has 62,220 square feet, and the guest house named the Mango House has seven bedrooms, according to recent news reports. Other structures on the property include two guest cottages and a manager’s house.
Altogether the buildings total 85,000 square feet, with 33 bedrooms, 34 bathrooms and 13 powder rooms.
Also mentioned are Gemini’s beautiful botanic garden with 1,500 species of tropical trees and plants.
Other features include a large-scale train in a butterfly garden and a golf practice course. Tax records note five structures on the property and tennis courts, boat docks, a boatlift, reflection pond, a utility building, basketball court and pool.
When the property was on the market in 1973 (for an unknown price), here’s the gist of what society columnist Suzy Knickerbocker had to say about it: Gemini was owned by Great Britain’s brewery scion, the “incomparable” Loel Guinness and his wife, the “ravishing” Gloria, who had lived at Gemini for 20 years at that point.
Going back further, she pointed out, the estate had been built by Mrs. Paul Mellon’s father, Jerry Lambert (of the Lambert pharmaceutical company). “It’s so beautiful, you could swoon,” she wrote. “But bring money.”
Most drivers on A1A do not realize they are driving over a living room and that the property’s lush landscaping conceals 85,000 square feet of buildings. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
The residence, she explained, was in two parts, so aptly called Gemini: one part oriented to the ocean and the second part to the lake.
The estate’s amenities were bountiful: 1,417 feet on both the ocean and the Intracoastal, a two-story, 39-room Georgian/British Colonial main house with six master suites and a living room that stretched under A1A (joining the residence’s two parts), a salt-water 50-by-25-foot pool, a pitch and putt green, a private island off-shore, helicopter pads (one with landing lights), and two studios, all set in exotically landscaped gardens.
Other newspaper articles of the time mention that Jackie Kennedy Onassis visited the Guinnesses, as well as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
An interesting side note: In 1981, Gemini was rented by Silvio De Lindegg and Adelita Scarpa for $10,000 a month. De Lindegg was a Gatsby-esque international land developer, and his lady friend, Scarpa, a Brazilian heiress.
He had convinced investors and banks to put millions into his building projects, but his deals went south, he defaulted on loans, he went bankrupt, and the duo disappeared.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news of the quiet marketing of the estate.
Since the Ziffs have owned the property, many changes have been made to the structures and the landscaping. Currently, the Manalapan estate is not listed on the MLS, but it is offered for sale through agents at Christie’s International Real Estate and Premier Estate Properties in Boca Raton.
Manalapan town records on the property date back only to 1974. They indicate that no new structures were added until 2003, when the Mango House, also referred to in the records as a caretaker’s house, was built in the southwest portion of the property.
Nothing was torn down, either, according to Lisa Petersen, town clerk, but there were many renovations and remodels noted on the ARCOM index.
She noted two tunnels to the beach recorded, one in 2000 and a south tunnel in 2007 (and Knickerbocker mentioned the tunnel, or actually, a room under A1A, in 1973). That makes three tunnels on the property. (The main house, by the way, was designed by Marion Syms Wyeth in the 1940s, but now has a different look.)
Ann Ziff is listed as being on the board of trustees for Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami. Carl Lewis, director of the Fairchild garden noted that the garden routinely exchanges rare plants with a large number of peer institutions, both public and private, to ensure the survival of those species in cultivation. “Gemini Gardens is one of those institutions,” he said, and this is standard operating procedure for any garden that grows rare species.
In 1992, William B. Ziff Jr. sold the Ziff-Davis publishing empire for $1.4 billion. His father co-founded the company in 1927, and Ziff Jr. inherited it in 1953. He died in 2006.
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