John Cheever's Ossining home back on market
- House where Cheever wrote "The Swimmer" and "Falconer"
John Cheever would know how to tell this story, about how his Ossining home for 21 years, the home in which he died in 1982, and his widow died in 2014, is now being sold for $340,000, a pittance by the standards of Westchester real estate.
He'd let the reader take delight in the fact that the Realtor handling the listing, for the bank that held his widow's reverse mortgage, is named Joe Kuhl, pronounced "Cool."
"Joe Kuhl has the listing," is probably what he would write, and leave it at that.
The five-acre estate along Route 9A, called Afterwhiles, was where Cheever — dubbed "the Chekhov of the suburbs" and "Ovid in Ossining" — welcomed literary luminaries including Ralph Ellison. It's where he returned after teaching writing at Sing Sing, an enterprise that gave him the imagery he needed for his masterpiece, "Falconer."
It's where he wrote about men catching trains to the city and returning home, about "Bullet Park," where neighbors are listed along with the number of bedrooms in their homes and the price of their real estate.
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"That house was the center of our family for the last 50, 60 years," Susan Cheever told The Journal News in 2014, when it first went on the market. "None of us want to live in it. After my mother died, there it was. I think we knew right away we would sell it."In 2014, soon after Mary Cheever's death, the couple's children, writers Ben and Susan, and Fred, put it on the market, asking $525,000.
On the market for a year, the property at 197 Cedar Lane did not sell.
"Mary had a reverse mortgage and was pulling money out of the property, against the equity," Kuhl explained. "The estate then has to sell the property and satisfy the mortgage or, if they can't do that, they can do a deed in lieu of foreclosure to the investor. I believe that's what occurred."
The house is completely empty and was put on the market about a week ago, Kuhl said, adding "there has been considerable interest in the property."
Cheever would likely have reported Kuhl's comment, about the place's literary legacy, without comment.That the property, listed in 2014 for $525,000, is now being sold for $340,000 reflects the need for repairs, but the property cannot be financed in a traditional way, Kuhl said. The sale must be all cash or be arranged through an FHA 203(k) loan, allowing the buyer to finance the purchase and rehabilitate the home with one loan.
"It certainly has some literary cachet, to those people who know what literary cachet means, and even what the word cachet means," Kuhl said.
The 2,688-square-foot stone colonial occupies five acres and was originally built in 1795. It was renovated in 1921 by Eric Gugler, the architect who redesigned the Oval Office for Franklin D. Roosevelt, the listing reports.
The listing continues: "Large living room on first floor and large library on second floor, both with wideboard floors and fireplaces. Two full-length front porches, stone patios, extensive stone terracing and perennial plantings. Stream with small waterfall and ponds."
The estimated annual taxes on the property: $22,736.
A telling line from the listing — "property is sold as-is and will require repair and renovation" — seems to be a kindred cousin of one of the final lines in Cheever's story, "Bullet Park," when it first appeared in The New Yorker in November 1967. (It was later expanded into a novel.) In it, a visitor to the Bullet Park neighborhood, awaiting the train in a worse-for-wear station, reads the paper.
"School taxes expected to increase."
JOHN CHEEVER'S HOUSE
Address: 197 Cedar Lane, Ossining
Price: $340,000, with estimated annual taxes of $22,736
School district: Ossining
MLS No.: 4619215
Contact: Joe Kuhl, J. Philip Real Estate, Briarcliff. 914-762-2500.