Jacqueline Onassis paid to stop her aunt's eviction from Grey Gardens, and the house sold for $220,000 on condition it not be torn down

Grey Gardens is an East Hampton house designed in 1897 by Joseph Greenleaf Thorp. Phelan Beale and his wife Edith Bouvier Beale, aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy, bought it in the 1920s. Phelan left in 1931 and divorced her by telegram from Mexico in 1946. Their daughter, also Edith, moved back in 1952. The family trust income ran out. In October 1971, after press reports, Suffolk County health officials inspected the house, found it full of litter and cats, and the Board of Health prepared to evict the two women. Jacqueline Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill paid for repairs to bring the house up to code. The eviction was dropped. In 1973 the Maysles brothers filmed the Beales, who were paid $5,000, and the film came out in 1975. The mother died in 1977. The house was listed at $500,000 and withdrawn when the best bid was $200,000. In 1979 the daughter sold it for $220,000 to the journalist Sally Quinn and the Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, on condition that it not be demolished. Bradlee later recalled "52 dead cats" in it. The couple spent years restoring the house and its walled garden. Bradlee died in 2014. Quinn sold it in 2017 for $15.5 million; the designer Liz Lange is reported as the owner^†. In 2026 it is a private home.