The majestic Oheka Castle on Long Island, a sprawling 127-room estate featuring a 72-foot-long ballroom, 110,000 square feet of lavish interiors, and nine reflecting pools, is heading to the auction block. Standing as a monument to Gilded Age opulence, the property looks like a classic French château stretched to king-size American proportions. Over the decades, it has firmly embedded itself in American popular culture and real estate lore. It famously served as the inspiration for Xanadu in Citizen Kane, hosted Taylor Swift in jodhpurs during the music video shoot for "Blank Space," and provided the backdrop for countless high-society events and weddings, including the nuptials of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner.
Set across 23 acres of formal gardens originally laid out by the legendary Olmsted brothers, the estate is a masterpiece of historical preservation that came with an astronomical price tag. A painstaking restoration effort that commenced in 1984 ultimately cost $40 million, marking what is widely believed to be the most expensive private building restoration in U.S. history. That monumental rehabilitation transformed the neglected structure into a luxury hotel and event space under the direction of developer Gary Melius. Now, following a bankruptcy filing, Melius is being forced to part with the iconic property. According to Forbes, the castle will be sold at a high-end luxury auction on October 27 with no minimum bid, managed by Adam Modlin of the Modlin Group alongside Concierge Auctions.
The estate spans a massive footprint that includes 34 hotel guest suites, a fine-dining restaurant, a bar, multiple banquet rooms, an expansive terrace, and an intricate underground network of tunnels originally built for staff access. Furthermore, the offering includes municipal approval to construct 95 condominium units across five subdivided acres of the property. Located in Huntington, New York, the estate sits within a convenient ten-minute driving radius of the Cold Spring Harbor Long Island Rail Road station, the historic Kerber’s Farm, and Volpe Restaurant, bridging secluded historic grandeur with modern accessibility.
The history of Oheka Castle dates back to the eve of the Jazz Age, when it was commissioned by Otto Kahn, a wealthy German-born investment banker. Kahn, a prominent financier of his era, was famously blocked from joining exclusive country clubs because he was Jewish. Undeterred, he decided to build his own equivalent, launching a friendly architectural rivalry with the Vanderbilts to construct the largest private residential estate in the United States. While George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina, ultimately claimed the title by a narrow margin, Kahn’s estate stood peerless in the New York region.
The property’s survival has been threatened several times throughout its history. Most famously, master builder Robert Moses attempted to push the route of the Northern State Parkway directly through the estate’s pristine grounds. Kahn successfully intervened, reportedly paying off Moses to reroute the highway. For decades, a sharp, unusual curve in the highway remained the only visible physical evidence of the political maneuvering—a lurid tale eventually brought to light by historian Robert Caro. Following Kahn’s death in 1934, his heirs were unable to maintain the massive tax burden and upkeep, unloading the property in 1939. Over the subsequent decades, the castle was carved up and repurposed for various institutional uses, serving variously as retirement housing for municipal sanitation workers, a military training compound, and a boarding school.
Developer Gary Melius gave the property a formidable second life, orchestrating its resurrection and developing a strategic plan to recoup his investments. This plan included securing approval from the Town of Huntington to carve out five acres of the estate for the development of 95 luxury condominiums, a lot that will be included in the upcoming auction package.
To handle the high-stakes sale, the ownership turned to Adam Modlin, a prominent luxury real estate broker known for managing some of the most sensitive and high-profile listings in the country. Modlin previously secured a buyer for Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious Upper East Side townhouse and successfully closed a $47 million transaction for billionaire Ronald Perelman’s sprawling 40-foot-wide Manhattan townhouse after it lingered on the market for six years. Yet, compared to Oheka Castle, even those massive urban properties seem petite. In promotional material shared on social media, Modlin described the Long Island landmark as "a real-life Gatsby estate," nodding to its long-held reputation as a direct inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal American novel The Great Gatsby.
The auction presents a rare blank slate for a buyer with deep pockets. The winning bidder could choose to invest a near-bottomless sum to return the hotel to private residency as an oligarchical palace, expand and modernize its hospitality operations, or stage their own real-life version of the monstrous corporate-retreat scenes from HBO’s Succession, which filmed key episodes on the grounds. Meanwhile, the property’s ballroom remains in high demand for high-end celebrations, with recently quoted wedding rates reaching $150,000 for upcoming dates, underscoring the enduring commercial viability of America’s most famous castle as it prepares for its next chapter under new ownership.
