Want to Live in Grey Gardens? It Can Be Yours for $20 Million

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Ms. Quinn recently put a price on parting with Grey Gardens: It is listed for $19.995 million. During her recent visit to East Hampton, Ms. Quinn walked from room to room, pointing out wicker furniture, chaise longues and a set of china with a floral pattern; all were among the treasures she discovered in the attic that first year and lugged down to preserve. “I had quit smoking a decade ago,” she said of that first trip to the attic, “but I had to have a cigarette. It was the most thrilling project.” Her husband, Benjamin C. Bradlee, had not been as enthusiastic about the idea of the restoration. Mr. Bradlee, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, where the two had met, took one look at the home, turned to his wife and promptly told her she was out of her mind.

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By the time Grey Gardens was restored, the couple were two of the most powerful people in Washington. They treated it as a retreat where famous friends, including Lauren Bacall, Lorne Michaels and Jack Nicholson, would visit during the month of August. During one party, the producer Norman Lear paid a group of violinists to pop out of the foliage and surprise the guests. Their frequent clambakes were just as memorable: Ms. Quinn, Mr. Bradlee and their friends once poured rosé into soda bottles, trying to avoid the beach police like a bunch of rich teenagers. “When people would walk into the house,” Ms. Quinn said, “you almost felt like fairy dust had been sprinkled all over us.” But as time wore on, the parties slowed. The death of the writer Nora Ephron, a close friend who lived across the street, in 2012 took some of the magic away, and it all but left when Mr. Bradlee died in 2014. After his death, Ms. Quinn said, the decision to sell wasn’t difficult.

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“This home will not be attractive to a Russian oligarch,” Ms. Quinn said dryly.

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