| Wednesday 22 December 1999 |
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Fire ruins pop singer Careys dreamhouse
The 22,000-square-foot Bedford mansion built by pop singer Mariah Carey and former husband Tommy Mottola was destroyed in an early morning fire yesterday. The Sarles Street house, which is not visible from the road, was sold by the couple for $20 million last year to financier Nelson Peltz, a longtime Bedford resident who also owns a neighboring 106-acre estate. Vacant since the sale, the nine-bedroom house was empty at the time of the fire and there were no injuries.
"The family is pretty devastated by this," said Neale Albert, a Manhattan lawyer who has represented Peltz for 30 years. "They were in the process of renovating it and they were finally getting close to moving the whole family into it." He said he expected the Peltzes would rebuild the house.
Firefighters were called to the scene at 1:15 a.m. yesterday. By the time they arrived, the top two floors of the three-story mansion were fully engulfed in flames and it took about four hours to put them out, said Ray Zaccari, chief of the Mount Kisco Volunteer Fire Department. The smoldering house flared up several times throughout the day, he said, as about 100 firefighters from Mount Kisco, Bedford, Bedford Hills, Armonk, Chappaqua, Katonah and Pleasantville fought the blaze.
Westchester County fire Cause and Origin team had not determined the cause of the fire last night, Zaccari said. Firefighters, however, told Peltz the cause was likely faulty wiring, Albert said. "It was a very majestic and picturesque structure," Zaccari said. "Seeing it being consumed by fire was a little overwhelming."
The fortresslike mansion, which sat on 51 acres, had seven fireplaces, a pistol range, a ballroom, a conservatory, a recording studio, and indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Carey and Mottola, the chief executive officer of Sony Music, built their dreamhouse in 1993 after buying the land for about $2 million two years earlier. The construction of the mansion irked the town and some of their Bedford neighbors, who complained of construction noise and runoff from a 2.5 million-gallon man-made pond. Peltz has also had trouble with the town. Bedford is fighting him in state Supreme Court, trying to stop him from using his helicopter to commute daily to New York City. Neighbors complained that the takeoffs and landings consistently rattle their doors and windows.
Peltz is chief executive officer of Triarc Cos. Inc., the Manhattan-based company that owns Arby's Restaurants, Snapple Beverages and Royal Crown Cola. He's worth more than $890 million and is ranked 290th on the most recent Forbes Magazine's America's 400 Richest People.
Peltz's other Bedford house, separated from the burned mansion by a nature preserve, is a five-bedroom Cape Cod-style home built in 1966. When the Carey-Mottola marriage broke up in 1997, Peltz, 57, decided to buy their property, too. He had planned to move with his wife, Claudia, and their six children into the Carey-Mottola home in about six months, Albert said. Peltz owns a third home in Palm Beach, Fla.
"It was a wonderful house and it was going to be even better," Albert said. "The house was built for just two people, Mariah Carey and Tommy Mottola. They (the Peltzes) were turning it into a place for a family." Sally Siano, a Bedford Realtor who showed the house before the sale to Peltz, called it "one of the most beautiful houses ever built" in the area. She said the hilltop property used to be a tree farm, featuring mostly evergreens. "Here you were, on the top of the world, with exquisite vistas of the countryside," Siano said. "It was Mariah's dreamhouse and it was quite whimsical."
Carey, who used the entire third floor to store her immense wardrobe, had a swing installed in an upstairs gazebo, where she often sat to watch sunsets, Siano said. Her Bedford neighbors included fashion designer Ralph Lauren; actors Glenn Close and Chevy Chase; and author Michael Crichton. "The house itself is the whole story," said Siano, who is vacationing in Boca Raton. "It's a very sad thing that this house doesn't get a chance to grow old." (The Journal News, December 19, 1999)
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