A 15,000-sq-foot Hudson River home inspired by architect Frank Lloyd-Wright and resembling the superhero Avengers’ HQ is on sale for an eye-watering $25 million.
Ledgerock sits just feet from the water’s edge in Hyde Park, in the Hudson Valley – a two-hour drive north from New York City – and with its glass frontage and cantilevered patio, it looks more like a Marvel superhero base than a family home.
The property was built by real estate mogul Jacob Frydman in 2010, and was first listed for sale in 2021 with a price tag of $45 million – before dropping by $20 million this year.
It comes with eight bedrooms, expansive terraces, a sculpture garden, a helipad, indoor and outdoor pools, a private beach and guesthouse.
Laws usually forbid building within 100-feet of the water’s edge, but pre-existing structures on the site allowed Frydman to build on their footprint, meaning a house like it could ‘never be built again’.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/living-room-ledgerock-hyde-park-HUDSONHOME1121-b6a40db2da2544fc92edbf0b6b7a16ff.jpg)
The Frydmans bought the site in 2005 for $1.5 million and over time amassed the rest of the 10.7 acre property.
They tore down three existing structures on the site to build the 15,000-square-foot home for their family.
Frydman told the Wall Street Journal in 2021 they then decided to sell when their children moved away as they realized they ‘don’t need something quite this big’.
This year the couple were forced to drop the asking price from $45 million to $25 million.
John Oliveira, at Douglas Elliman, told Times Union the new price is ‘corrected’ and is ‘where we need to be’.
Ledgerock was inspired by the work of the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is designed to have views of the river from every room.
A private peninsula, with water access, offers unobstructed views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains.
Its outdoor space also includes a sculpture garden, indoor and outdoor pools and spas, an outdoor kitchen, a helipad, a dock and a beach.
Inside there is a gym, a billiards room and even a two-story library.
There are elevators in both the main house and the guesthouse.
The high price tag comes with enhanced security and the property has biometric locks and smart home technology.
The house is built around a steel structure covered with 45,000 square feet of fossilized limestone.
Inside, it is coated with exotic woods and stones with leather floors, Zebrawood and cowhide walls throughout.
The house even has its own bar, made from orange onyx, and a dumbwaiter to carry food from the kitchen to the dining room.
In the primary bathroom there is an eight foot wide gold travertine bathtub.
The house is filled with art from around the world, collected specifically for the property by the family.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/exterior-ledgerock-hyde-park-HUDSONHOME1121-6c1c54dc473045ba9d26fc8b8b063480.jpg)
There are 54 sculptures throughout the grounds including a 3,000-pound lava stone sculpture from Jakarta, Indonesia.
Ledgerock seems more fitting for a superhero base than a family home and has sparked comparison to the fictional Avengers HQ from the Marvel films.
The home is cantilevered over a patio to protect it from increasingly frequent flooding and storm damage.
It is designed to divert any water from the house so that the outside structure isn’t damaged by the river bursting it’s banks.
Mr Frydman told the Journal in 2021 they had had two storms in 12 years and ‘it worked absolutely as planned. We have not had a drop of water in the house.’
The sale comes in the wake of the property’s owner, Frydman, facing a series of legal battles with his former business partner Eli Verschleiser.
In 2019, Verschleiser accused Frydman of behaving ‘like a rabid dog’ and attacking him in an elevator.
He said Frydman ‘would not release’ his finger and bit his leg until he bled.
The lawsuit read: ‘Like a pit bull Frydman had sunk his teeth deep into Verschleiser’s calf for a minimum of three minutes. Like a vicious dog, Frydman would not unlock his teeth.’
The claims followed a suit filed by Frydman against Verschleiser in 2018 in which he accused his ex-business partner of scheming to inject him with psychedelic drugs so he’d appear ‘insane,’ then trapping him in an elevator and beating him.
The alleged elevator incident followed a tense meeting over a botched business deal for 866 UN Plaza, the New York Post reported at the time.
