Migdale

This is Migdale Castle outside the bucolic village of Millbrook in Dutchess County, New York.  The 35,000 square foot Tudor revival home sits on a 350 acre estate that comprises a pond, orchards, kitchen garden and a separate gatehouse and guest house.  Bette Midler is a neighbor.  Dutchess County, along with adjacent Litchfield County, Connecticut and the Massachusetts Berkshires, is one of the rare desirable areas in the United States that has managed to avoid a lot of subdivision or development despite being within easy reach of a major city. The area is characterized by small, quaint towns with antique shops and farm-to-table restaurants, leafy estates and small farms and is favored by celebrities and business people from New York that want less noise, less pretension and more space than they could find in places like Greenwich or the Hamptons. Much of the land is encumbered by conservation easements that restrict development and guarantee a serene, green, leafy, artisanal future.

Migdale Castle was completed in 1927 by Margaret “Midge” Carnegie, the daughter and only child of Andrew Carnegie, and her husband, Roswell Miller, The name Migdale was a play on Margaret’s nickname. Andrew Carnegie was the founder of Carnegie Steel (later US Steel).  Mr. Carnegie was, by some reckonings, the sixth wealthiest person in history with a fortune worth $372 billion in 2014 dollars (right behind the communist icon Josef Stalin in 5th place).  However, most of his fortune was given away in his lifetime to endow libraries and universities and Margaret had to make do with $15 million.

Margaret Carnegie served as a director for the Carnegie Corporation, a philanthropic trust set up by her father, that has been funding libraries and educational institutions for over a century. The Corporation’s best known invention is the beloved children’s television show, Sesame Street. Roswell was a civil engineer and real estate sales executive who, before marrying Margaret, had served on submarine chasers during the First World War. She and Roswell lived at Migdale with their four children until 1953. In that year, Midge and Roswell split up and Roswell got Migdale in the divorce. Midge moved to Greenwich, CT where she lived out her years passing away in 1990.  Roswell lived at Migdale for 30 years until his death in 1983.

After Roswell passed away, Migdale sat neglected until the year 2000. Enter French/American art dealer Guy Wildenstein and his wife, Kristina Hansson. Guy (pronounced Gee as in geese) and Kristina paid $5.3 million for Migdale and have since poured an additional $20 million into the property on renovations. Guy was a member of the Wildenstein family of art dealers that originated in France in the 1870s. The Wildensteins hold a private art collection containing priceless works from the likes of Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Monet that is reputedly the second most valuable private collection in the world (after the Queen’s Royal Collection which is supposedly worth $8 billion). [Fun fact about Guy Wildenstein: he once held the door open for me as I was going to get keys made at the hardware store in Millbrook.]

Much of the Wildenstein’s art is tucked away in secure “offshore” storage facilities in Switzerland away from the prying eyes of tax authorities. However, in 2001 the French Ministry of Economy and Finance decided to take a crack at it. Tipped off by Guy’s own stepmother, the Ministry accused Guy and his brother, Alec, of hiding artwork inherited from their father’s estate and evading $600 million in taxes. Guy and Alec were also accused of money laundering and were facing prison terms. After two trials that exposed Wildenstein family secrets that they didn’t want exposed (e.g., Bahamian trust accounts, a practice of disinheriting the wives of Wildensteins), Guy and Alec were acquitted of all charges in 2017. Not a ministry to give up easily, Economy and Finance got the French high court to annul the verdict and trial #3 will commence shortly.

Fresh from exoneration #2 in Paris, Guy and Kristina decided to unload Migdale and listed it for $14 million in 2018.  For several years it was under contract to a certain Will Guidara, a Manhattan restaurateur who gave up on city life after the COVID pandemic forced his restaurants to close. Mr. Guidara planned to create a boutique resort at Migdale (calling it Second Mountain) featuring gourmet food, spa treatments, etc. Unfortunately for Mr. Guidara, the local villagers in Millbrook didn’t take kindly to this intrusion on their tranquility. The usual claims of traffic impacts and lack of water, not to mention zoning inconsistency, were the barricades thrown up in front of Mr. Guidara.

March 2025 Update: Unable to secure permits to realize his vision for Migdale, Mr. Guidara threw in the towel and put the property up for auction. In May 2024, Migdale was sold for $9 million to the actor Liam Neeson.

If you want to see more of this lovely property, click here for a melodic YouTube video. The Wildensteins are an interesting family and you can learn more about their art business by clicking here or you can walk by their gallery at 689 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. If you’ve got 40 or 50 million dollars to invest in art they will even let you in (visits are by appointment only).