A Pritzker Prize-winning architect’s first home renovation that once asked $18M will head to auction

A Sands Point, LI home in Great Gatsby territory that once asked $18 million — and comes with a private beach and a giant slide — is slated for auction with a minimum reserve bid of $5.5 million. 

The six-bedroom, 4,623-square-foot spread at 27 Astor Lane boasts 200 feet on the beach and a giant stainless steel corkscrew slide that doubles as a fire escape — from the third floor down to the ground — all on the North Shore’s ritzy Gold Coast.

Sands Point was the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional East Egg in “The Great Gatsby.”

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Real estate scion Richard Maidman bought the estate from the archdiocese of Brooklyn in 1971. Built in 1913, the property was once a rather austere retreat for nuns. Maidman commissioned Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier, who designed the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, to reimagine and modernized the dwelling. It was Meier’s first home renovation project.

Meier, 90, retired from his firm in 2021, three years after five women came forward with sexual abuse allegations against him, including four of his former employees. (In a statement at that time, Meier said he was “deeply troubled and embarrassed” by the women’s accounts. “While our recollections may differ, I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my behavior.”)

Maidman died in 2017. The estate is now held by a Maidman family trust. The auction, to be held Nov. 14, is run by Misha Haghani’s Paramount Realty USA with Serhant brokers Rachel King and Chase Landow. 

Known as the Maidman House, the wooded compound sits on 3 acres overlooking Hempstead Harbor. 

“My father grew up there, but we came on weekends, and I loved sliding down the slide and waving to my grandfather as he read the newspaper,” said Harry Maidman, his grandson. “We are selling because we aren’t there enough. Our family is now spread out across the country.”

Most estates in the area are more traditional — but Meier made this one modern, by gutting the home and transforming it with curved end pieces and a white exterior. Inside, the walls were all different colors — although they are now muted in tone, as well.

“My grandparents didn’t want to tear down the house, so Richard Meier encased it and made it more modern. At first, the home had different colored walls to make it more livable for a family, instead of a nuns’ dorm, and he blew out floors to create a triple-height dining room and a double-height living room. He turned a nuns’ retreat into a modern gem,” Maidman said. “It was a pleasure to grow up here on weekends. It’s a kid’s dream, with boating in summer and sledding in winter. It was a very idyllic place to spend the weekend.”

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Unusual details include that spiral silver slide that joins what was once — and could still be — a children’s playroom to the backyard, three stories down, and it doubles as a fire exit.

Harry Maidman’s grandmother Lynne Maidman (before she and his grandfather divorced) came up with the idea to create the slide as a fire escape after seeing something similar in Arizona, where she was traveling with her father who had been a colonel in the US Army during World War II. 

The compound includes the main house, which features a living area with double-height ceilings, and a gallery with a library and reading area. There’s also an all-white chef’s kitchen. Sliding doors open to a deck with harbor views. 

In addition, there’s a two-family staff house, a poolside cabana and a two-story boathouse/guest house on the beach, once the nuns’ locker room where they’d change into swimsuits. In addition, there’s a historic icehouse, a pool and a carriage house that has been transformed into a seven-car garage. 

The estate also features a tennis court, and landscaped gardens that include hundred-year-old maple and oak trees. The property is next door to the 210-acre Village Club of Sands Point, a members-only golf and tennis club owned by the village and part of the Guggenheim Estate.