This far out address is looking for a new owner.
In Millbrook, New York, a sprawling retreat once home to Harvard professor-turned-psychedelic superfan Timothy Leary has hit the market for $65 million — a potential record-breaker for the rapidly gentrifying Hudson Valley.
The approximately 2,000-acre spread, known as the Hitchcock Estate, dates back to the 1800s and enjoyed considerable cultural significance in the 1960s, when Leary — originator of the famous phrase, “turn on, tune in, drop out” — and a gaggle of like-minded LSD-lovers began occupying the place, the Wall Street Journal first reported.
Leary and his acolytes wound up moving onto the Hudson Valley property after owners Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, heirs to the Mellon banking fortune, invited Leary at the suggestion of their sister, Peggy Hitchcock, who was romantically involved with the acid advocate.
While there, Leary and his compatriots used the compound as a hallucinogenic playground and headquarters of sorts, with characters including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley all at some point stopping by to join in the revelry.
“People stayed up all night tripping and prancing around the estate,” recounts the book “Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond,” according to the Journal.
“Everyone was always either just coming down from a trip or planning to take one. Some dropped acid for 10 days straight, increasing the dosage and mixing in other drugs,” the author wrote.
As a result, “Millbrook became the world’s most important site dedicated to the pursuit of psychedelic awakening” declares the 2018 book “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD.”
After Leary left, the estate fell on hard times but has recently been restored.
It currently features two homes — the 14,706-square-foot mansion constructed in the late 19th century and a 10,000-square-foot Bungalow built in 1912.
The buyer will also inherit a stone bowling alley, a Bavarian-style gate house, a three-bedroom cottage, two-apartment carriage, a stable, tennis pavilion and two farmhouses.
If the Hitchcock family gets anywhere close to the $65 million they’re currently asking for the property, it will set a new record for the region, Heather Croner of Sotheby’s International Realty, who holds the listing, told the Journal.
