He’s got that bunny money!
Artist Hunt Slonem – who’s known for his colorful bunnies and whose work has appeared in the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — has added to his vast real estate portfolio with a haunted mansion on Rhode Island’s dramatic Cliff Walk.
We hear Slonem is the purchaser of Seaview Terrace, which was on the market for $28.5 million.
Built in the Elizabethan Revival style and set on eight sweeping acres, the 29 bedroom, 18 bath, 43,772 square foot manse was formerly owned by Gilded Age whiskey titan Edson Bradley.
We’re told Bradley’s long-dead wife can occasionally be seen playing an organ in the home.
In 1923, Bradley had parts of his French-Gothic mansion in Washington, D.C. disassembled and relocated to Newport, and added new construction.
It went on to serve as U.S. Army officers quarters during World War II, an elite all-girls private school and the home of entrepreneur and preservationist Martin Thomas Carey.
The vast exterior of the home – the fifth largest mansion in ritzy Newport — entered popular culture when it depicted as Collinwood Mansion in the 1960’s cult-classic television series “Dark Shadows.”
The home is also known for its paranormal activity, a selling point for Slonem.
“He loves old haunted mansions,” said a close friend. “Hunt is a spiritualist. He receives messages from those who are no longer with us.”
The home was featured on the show “Ghost Hunters” and is known as one of the most haunted place in the state.
Apparently Bradey’s wife can still be seen playing the home’s Estey organ and spirits can be seen walking the halls.
In the 2011 episode, the owners said that they’d heard disembodied voices, cold breezes, and door handles jiggling.
Slonem, whose bunny and bird paintings adorn the chicest homes on the Upper East Side, is also known for his paintings of Abraham Lincoln, who he has claimed to have spoken to through mediums.
His masterwork, a depiction of The Venerable Pierre Toussaint, the former Haitian slave and devout Catholic, hangs in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
“The new home is a continuation of a lifelong dialogue with history, with faith and with spirits that refuse to remain silent,” says our source. “For Hunt, walls are not just walls. They listen. And sometimes, if you believe as he does, they speak back.”
The manse features stained glass, an organ room, a whispering gallery, and a theater.
Slonem, whose work also hangs in the Whitney and the Miro Foundation, also owns several historic homes including two mansion in Louisiana and Searles Castle in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He also owns copper baron James McLean’s former home in the Catskill Mountains and an armory in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
He also maintains an artist studio on 12th Avenue.
“My homes are my life’s work—making old houses into a new form of my art,” he says on his web site.
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