Hepburn House Fares Better In Sandy Than Hurricane of ’38

Katharine Hepburn was so used to flooding at her seaside estate in Fenwick that the two refrigerators in her kitchen were on 16-inch tile platforms.

Katharine Hepburn’s former home in Fenwick wasn’t flooded during Sandy. Courant File Photo/Richard Messina

But the flooding that devastated much of Connecticut’s shoreline in the wake of Sandy didn’t touch Hepburn’s renovated mansion, on the market since last year, in the borough of Old Saybrook.

“It was on the yard, absolutely,” said Colette Harron, of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty in Essex, who has the listing. “But it didn’t come into the house.”

Harron said the 15-r00m. 7-1/2 bath house was spared damage from Sandy because the recent multi-million dollar redevelopment raised the house 5-1/2 feet.

“The fact that they lifted the house had a lot to do with it,” Harron said.

The owners, Frank J. Sciame, a Manhattan-based developer, and his wife, Barbara, have the property on the market for $30 million.

There are plans to build a second, 2,750-square-foot guesthouse on the 3-1/2 acre estate to the east of the main house. Construction hasn’t started, Harron said.

The Hepburn family had a smaller, yet still impressive, summer home on the property which was leveled in the Hurricane of 1938.