Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
It’s an oldie, but so is Kant, and besides, the headline cropped up in this week’s PowerLine.
Related:
212 Bedford Road, looking for $8.895 million. Originally built in 1840 and, back then known as the “John Sands house”, it was completely rebuilt in 2005 and done well. I toured it back in 2005, before the rebuild, and it was in pretty bad condition, with not much remaining of the 1840 structure due to extensive additions and remodeling over the years, and its 190 acres reduced to the present 2.8.
There was still, however, what had been a pub/bar with a separate entrance in the basement; no longer active, but I suppose back in the day it was long way by horse to Augie’s in Cos Cob for a beer, so local farmers must have appreciated the convenience.
It was profiled in the Greenwich Time/Stamford Advocate back in 2010, a month after it had been put on the market at $6.495 (it eventually sold to these owners for $4.6 in October 2012). It’s an interesting history.
By Susan Nova, Correspondent April 1, 2010
The 1840s John Sands house in Greenwich has been totally renovated and updated in recent years. Today known as Sunset Farm, the 13,000-square foot home on almost three acres has eight bedrooms, five full baths, three powder rooms and five fireplaces. The pool house has another two bedrooms, bath, living room and kitchen. From 1908 until 1990, generations of the Herbert L. Nichols family lived in the house, farming the land into the 1970s.
The John Sands House … once sheltered the Palmer House, the Welsh House, the mills on Wampus Brook and a lime kiln, a stone structure in the shape of a bottle that produced quicklime, which is used in mortar and plaster and as fertilizer.
Today known as Sunset Farm, the rebuilt 13,000-square-foot main house is as varied as its history.
It was built circa 1840 by John Sands Jr. in the Greek Revival style, and is now a Dutch Colonial with a cedar-shake roof. By 1857, in financial difficulties, Sands had lost the house and land to his niece, Sarah Sands, and Mary Mead. The land was expanded with the purchase of the Byram Swamp 30 years later, and there were later land additions.
In 1908, after more than a half-century, the property, by then 190 acres, was sold to banker Herbert Nichols, whose family farmed the land into the 1970s and lived in the frequently renovated house until 1990. Two years after moving in, Nichols had added two bays and a third floor with a gambrel roof. The clapboard exterior was sheathed in shingle, and the original entrance was moved to the center of the house.
The house later was sold by Nichols to C.L. Welsh, a photographer and advertising executive.
Its 2005 redo by the present owners was designed and managed by Rocco Lettieri of The HomeFront Organization in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., and builder Mark Mariani of Greenwich, and was completed in 20 weeks.
Mention of that 190 acres reminded me that not so long ago the Back Country really was back in the country, and would be totally unrecognizable today; the 100-150 acre spreads have almost all been split into 4-acre lots, and although that sounds like a generous area, the look and feel is entirely different.
I still have faint memories of driving up there in the early 60s, accompanying my mother and older sister Lorin to a stable where Lorin took riding lessons. On dark, fall afternoons, it seemed like a trip to a world completely different from Riverside, and I loved it. And miss it today.
*(Gideon has written to inform me that Bedford Road is jammed up against the Armonk, not the Banksville border. I responded by pointing out that north of the Post Road, it’s all Chinatown.)
We’re seeing a lot of these lately: a buyer builds (8 Fox Run, yesterday) or buys a multi-multi-million dollar mansion, (12 Deer Park, Tuesday), (188 Round Hill Road), also Tuesday) and then changes her mind before she even unpacks her bags. 16 Windrose Way, Mead Point, is the latest example: purchased for $13.750 in July 2024 (after it had started at $21.5 million in 2022), put back on the market this past September at $15 million it’s reported under contract today (I’ve revised the original post to reflect its proper status, which I’d misread). Unchanged (aside from a PhotoShopped white paint job on the listing pages), although potential buyers are encouraged to “ask about landscape, renovation and new-build plans”. Personally, I’d go with the new-build idea.
The shame of it is that they were working, forcing other countries to lower their own punitive tariffs imposed on U.S. products, brought in billions of dollars in foreign investments in U.S. manufacturing plants and accomplished trillions of dollars of trade agreements* with other countries.
Congress could fix this by enacting an empowerment law, but it won’t.
How, by the way, are the hundreds of billions of dollars* already to be refunded, and to whom?
*Per Kavanaugh’s dissent, discussed at NR.
who, me?
Sometimes on a TV show like The View there are changes in tone that are so subtle that they're very hard to detect. This is NOT one of those instances.
The shift just coincidentally started when this detail about the Epstein files dropped:
"The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg addressed her name coming up in the Jeffrey Epstein files during the show on Tuesday, shutting down any link to the late convicted child sex offender.
"In the name of transparency," Goldberg began as she asked for the email to appear on the screen. "My name is in the files."
Goldberg's name is mentioned in an email from 2013, where someone says that she needs a plane to Monaco and that "John Lennon's charity is paying for it." Goldberg said that it should have said Julian Lennon's charity and explained that the email went on to ask Epstein if he would offer his private plane. The document released by the Justice Department showed Epstein responding with "no thnaks [sic]."
There's now a "compare and contrast" video going around via @WesternLensman showing how the Epstein files were discussed on The View before the Goldberg news, and after.
The View, Before: Release the damn files!
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 17, 2026
The View, Today: Not like that! pic.twitter.com/BuvnnE6xHz
January 25, 2026: actual, unretouched photo of greenwich third selectman rachel khanna on her way to deliver a sternly worded letter to the editor
Greenwich’s Third Selectman Rachael Khanna has released a formal statement to Greenwich Free Press complaining that another local news outlet, Greenwich Sentinel, reprinted without her explicit authorization an editorial she’d previously submitted for publication to The Greenwich Free Press, Greenwich Patch, her Facebook page, and, presumably, Greenwich Time. Even worse, because, they claimed, she had previously refused permission to use her likeness, the editors “used a doctored photograph of me which altered my appearance to make me unrecognizable”.
Oh, the horror — a politician thrives on seeing their picture everywhere, so the pain Khanna must have endured by this slight can only be imagined. Let’s correct that now:
Apparently, Greenwich Sentinel has caved in to her pressure and deleted the offending press release of December from its own site — I can’t find it, anyway — and that’s a shame, because her demand for its removal demonstrates that this politician’s grasp of the First Amendment and the principle of free speech is as weak and hypercritical as her understanding of political issues: anyone’s letter to a newspaper is by definition a public statement, and a politician’s self-described “editorial” even more so. Once it’s out there, Rachael, you don’t get to pick and choose who is allowed to pass it on.
Here’s Khanna’s whiny missive to Greenwich Free Press from two days ago:
Submitted by Rachel Khanna, Greenwich Democratic Selectwoman
Dear Neighbors,
Last week, Greenwich Sentinel published a doctored photograph of me in their print edition which altered my appearance to make me unrecognizable. Later, Greenwich Sentinel added an editor’s note claiming they had edited the photo because I had requested to not be in their newspaper.
In a separate incident, my name was deliberately excluded from a Greenwich Sentinel news article reporting on a group of women being honored by the YWCA—9 of the 10 honorees were listed. Again the editor claimed I had asked to be removed.
I would like to take this opportunity to provide the facts.
“Last December, Greenwich Sentinel re-published, without my permission, a letter to the editor that I had submitted to other news outlets.”
In response, I requested in writing that – should Greenwich Sentinel want to publish an editorial of mine in the future – I would be grateful if they would ask permission. To be clear, I made no request to be excluded from Greenwich Sentinel news coverage or photographs.
According to the National Press Photographers’ Association code of ethics, professional standards strongly discourage altering images in a way that misleads viewers or misrepresents subjects.
It is my hope that Greenwich Sentinel act with integrity and issue a public apology for their actions. Now more than ever, it is vital that journalists act in ways worthy of the public trust and that Greenwich residents can be sure what they are seeing and reading in the press is real.
Sincerely,
Rachel Khanna
And here is an original letter of February 8, 2026, not published by the Sentinel or, at least, no longer up, but reprinted here by FWIW without Kahanna’s express prior approval. In addition to including her party’s oh-so-tired Hitler trope, note these two excerpts that demonstrate her inability to recognize irony even when it bites her on her bottom:
“To date, the current administration has continued to undermine democratic norms by exerting control over the press”; and “We must stay engaged locally and nationally by defending our institutions: our courts, the press, our election system.” (No need to ask her position on voter ID)
My father was born in Germany and was in his 20s when Hitler came to power. He managed to escape to the Netherlands, where he helped in the Resistance. He and his first wife hid Jews and people who were on the German blacklist in a hole under their living room floor.
Ninety years later, I am reminded of what my father told me about his experiences, about how at first everything seemed normal: people still went to work and kids still went to school. And yet little by little things were changing. Rights were disappearing, fear was creeping in, and lies were becoming truth.
I’m reminded of sitting in my history class and not understanding why the Allied Powers appeased Hitler when he annexed Sudetenland – which is part of the Czech Republic today – and how the opposition in Germany was so easily subdued. This rollback of our rights and freedoms is what is happening now in our own country. We can’t fool ourselves into believing that history is not repeating itself. It is.
And we can’t fool ourselves into believing that we can sit on the sidelines and things will be ok. To date, the current administration has continued to undermine democratic norms by exerting control over the press including raiding journalists’ homes; they are condoning the shooting of innocent civilians exercising their first amendment rights; they are grabbing up voter rolls and election ballots; and they are threatening to seize a sovereign territory.
This is not a time to turn away. If we want to protect our democracy, we must speak up and we must speak out. We must stay engaged locally and nationally by defending our institutions: our courts, the press, our election system. And we must build community. It’s in our hands.
Rachel Khanna is a former State Representative in the 149th district and today is the Democratic member of the Greenwich Board of Selectmen
Just another wannabe dictator, employing her party’s usual tactic of projecting her own behavior onto her enemies. It’s a shame she’s in our local government.
98 Hillcrest Park Road, $2.150 million. Located in the Cos Cob section of Hillcrest, and to be honest, I didn’t know there was one, this 1971 house is very much not one of the original Hillcrest homes, but then, its price reflects that.
8 Fox Run Lane, from $22 million to $21. That should do it.
Originally part of a two-lot assemblage, 8-14 Fox Run that comprised 8 acres and sold for $3,8 million in 2020, Lot 14 was split off, the original 1927 house on #8 was razed and this house put up in its place. I’m not wild about either type of design, the original or this new one, but I’m not shopping for a $21 million house, either, so who cares?
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