Truman Capote's former Brooklyn digs sell for $12 million

"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act"
-TC

There's a new high in Brooklyn Heights — the so-called Truman Capote House that sold for about $12 million.

After almost two years on the market, the yellow mansion where Capote wrote “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” has reportedly fetched the highest price for a single-family home in borough history.

The previous record for a Brooklyn single-family house was $11 million for a house also in the Heights. The median house price in the borough is $454,383.

Sources told the Daily News the new owner bought the home under a corporate name and has already closed on the property. The listing had vanished from Sotheby’s broker Karen Heyman’s web page on Friday. She couldn’t be reached.

Heyman, among Brooklyn’s top brokers, counts director Baz Luhrmann as a client. She was also the listing broker when Jennifer Aniston bought her West Village penthouse.

The 18-room home boasts 11 fireplaces, parking for four cars, crystal chandeliers, Greek Revival columns, and a stairwell mural copied from the Kennedy White House. It was originally listed at $18 million in May 2010.

In Manhattan neighborhoods like the West Village, brokers say the house would have cost nearly $30 million.

Excited neighbors on Willow St. reported seeing activity at the house, including lights on at night, cars in the driveway and moving trucks at the house.

The house evokes many memories in the neighborhood.

“I remember doing a reading in the house and just thinking how substantial it is,” said “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” screenwriter and author Peter Hedges, who once lived and still writes in the neighborhood. “You can imagine Capote running around with his slippers on. ”

“My son used to play with a boy who lived in the house, and it really is just an amazing building,” said Dawne Hentrich, 58, a teacher at the Grace Church School nearby. “The price doesn’t surprise me, this neighborhood used to be more middle class, but it’s been gentrified times 10, which isn’t a bad thing.”

Capote, who rented the downstairs apartment from “Guys and Dolls” Broadway producer Oliver Smith, had lavish, booze-filled parties at the house when Smith was out of town.

With Denis Slattery

70 Willow Street courtesy Sotheby's International Realty. Townhouse where Truman Capote once wrote is on sale for a record $18 million.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/real-estate/truman-capote-brooklyn-digs-sell-12m-article-1.1032312#ixzz1oFlJVGSN

It has also been rumored that Capote stayed an wrote at Villa Hermosa in Palm Springs a complex in Central Palm Springs designed by Albert Frey