Tick Hall is the longtime home of legendary talk show host Dick Cavett and his late wife Carrie Nye. Noted architect Stanford White of the firm of McKim, Mead, and White built the beachfront estate in Montauk in the 1880s. The house is one of that firm's "Seven Sisters," a collection of – you guessed it – seven homes in the shingle style in Montauk. These seven homes were built between 1881 and 1883 as hunting and fishing cottages for a group of wealthy New Yorkers. Cavett, 80, told the Wall Street Journal that selling Tick Hall is "the hardest thing in the world to do."
Cavett is best known for The Dick Cavett Show, which he hosted on various networks from 1968 to 1995. His guests included celebrities of a now bygone era including Bette Davis, Groucho Marx, and Noel Coward. He met his wife, actress Carrie Nye, in an undergraduate drama class at Yale. They married in 1964 and remained married until her death from lung cancer in 2006.
The home is 7,000 square feet and sits on a bluff with panoramic views of the Atlantic island in Montauk, which is at the eastern end of Long Island. The home is surrounded by more than 170 acres of oceanfront conservation land. Cavett sold 77-acres for $18 million in 2007 to a government consortium. This ensures that the property will remain secluded. Tick Hall sits on 19 acres, has 900-feet of ocean frontage – known locally as Cavett's Cove, seven bedrooms, and five bathrooms. The property also has a swimming pool, a freshwater pond, and miles of equestrian trails:
In 1997, Tick Hall burned to the ground. The fire is thought to have been caused by an accident during a roof repair. Only the chimney was left standing. Generations of family heirlooms from Nye's family and antiques were destroyed.
Cavett and Nye decided to build an exact replica of Tick Hall after the fire. The original plans for the house had long since been lost or destroyed so the couple relied on photos and their memories during the reconstruction. The rebuilding of Tick Hall was the subject of a 2003 documentary called From the Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall.
Cavett's late wife said in a 2001 interview with Architectural Digest:
"You must remember, Tick Hall is not a fancy house. It's a simple country house by the sea."
Cavett and Nye first rented Tick Hall in the early 1960s. They later purchased it and over the years, guests in the home have included such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, Woody Allen, Tennessee Williams, and Sir Laurence Olivier.
Tick Hall can be yours for $62 million.
***Update***
After a number of price reductions, Tick Hall finally sold in October 2021 for $23 million.
