A Fairy Tale Castle With Celebrity History Just Listed Near Manhattan and the Price Is Surprisingly Low

In the 1920s, a man named Joseph Keen arrived in Irvington, New York from Florida with almost nothing, except a child’s hand-drawn sketch of a Cinderella castle tucked in his pocket. That sketch became real. In 1929, Villa Keen was built.

Nearly 100 years later, it is for sale again.

The property just listed at $1.8 million. Five bedrooms, six bathrooms, 3,502 square feet, four turrets, a central courtyard, and a beech tree near the entrance that carries Native American carvings from the 1700s.

That tree is older than the United States.

The House Keen Built and Could Not Keep

Joseph Keen designed Villa Keen to look like a European castle. The stucco facade was built to resemble limestone.

The roof is Mediterranean terracotta. Inside: stained glass windows, carved wooden ceiling beams, marble flooring, an oak-lined library, and a Schonbek Austrian crystal chandelier hanging in the entryway.

Two of the four turrets are bedrooms. The grounds include a pool, a pool house, and an enclosed courtyard.

Keen fell into financial difficulty shortly after construction. He never got to keep what he built. The home passed to Lloyd Stratton, who rose to become president of The Associated Press. One dream funded the next.

The Broadway Season That Played Out Inside a Castle

By the late 1960s, the home was owned by Robert Wright, associate producer of The Carol Burnett Show.

He rented it to Academy Award-winning actress Shirley Jones and her husband, Tony Award-nominated actor Jack Cassidy, while they co-starred in the 1968 Broadway musical Maggie Flynn.

It was the first and only time the married couple appeared on Broadway together.

The show ran just 82 performances before closing on January 5, 1969.

During that entire run, Shirley Jones, Jack Cassidy, and their children, including a young Shaun Cassidy, who would later sell over 20 million records worldwide, were living in turret bedrooms of a 1929 castle outside Manhattan.

Listing agent Adam Blankfort of Corcoran Baer & McIntosh described it simply: “Once you open the 15-foot stained glass gates, you are transported to a bygone era.”

That quote is not marketing. It is accurate.

Three Listings, One Buyer Who Walked Away

Here is the part most coverage misses entirely.

Villa Keen has been on the market before. It sold in July 2023 for $1.65 million to a tech entrepreneur with a passion for architecture who planned a full renovation.

He relocated to the West Coast before completing the work. The castle went back on the market.

It is now listed at $1.8 million, which is $150,000 above what the last buyer paid, and the renovation still needs to happen.

This pattern comes up more than people expect in celebrity-adjacent and historic real estate.

Chase Stokes spent 7 years building his life in Charleston before his $3 million home quietly told the whole story of what he was leaving behind. The property always reflects the chapter closing.

If you follow stories like this closely, there is a WhatsApp channel worth checking out that covers real estate moves like this one as they happen: Real Estate Pulse. Good source if you want to stay ahead of these listings before the news cycle catches up.

Why This Matters

This is not just a charming listing story.

Westchester County’s single-family home market closed 2025 with a county-wide median price of $985,000, up 6.5% from 2024, and total sold volume crossing $7.5 billion for the year, according to the 2025 Westchester County Market Report.

In that market, $1.8 million for 3,500 square feet on 2.43 acres, with Metro-North access roughly 45 minutes to Grand Central, is not an unreasonable number. For the right buyer, it may be a rare one.

The difficulty is that Villa Keen is not looking for a buyer. It is looking for a specific kind of buyer. Someone who sees the renovation as part of the story, not a reason to walk away.

That tension between a property’s history and its market reality keeps showing up in high-profile listings.

Miles Guo managed to find a buyer for his NYC apartment just weeks before his sentencing on billion-dollar fraud charges, a reminder that even complicated properties find their moment. And sometimes the timing itself becomes part of the story.

Not every unique property sells fast either.

Diane Keaton’s so-called Pinterest house quietly disappeared from the market five months after selling for $27 million, and even that did not make the kind of noise you would expect for a $27 million transaction.

Specific properties find specific people, often quietly.

Villa Keen is the same. It will sell. The question is just what version of the story the next owner wants to write.

Key Takeaways

• Villa Keen at 16 Lewis Road, Irvington, NY is listed at $1.8 million through Corcoran Baer & McIntosh
• Built in 1929 from a hand-drawn sketch, 3,502 sq ft, 5 beds, 6 baths, 4 turrets on 2.43 acres
• 22 miles north of Manhattan, roughly 45 minutes to Grand Central via Metro-North
• Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy lived here in 1968 while performing on Broadway together for the first and only time
• Shaun Cassidy, who sold over 20 million records, spent time in the castle’s turret bedrooms as a child
• The home last sold in July 2023 for $1.65 million and is back on the market at $1.8 million
• A beech tree on the property carries Native American carvings estimated to date to the 1700s
• The original builder, Joseph Keen, lost the home to financial hardship shortly after completing it

What do you think: is a home like this worth buying as a project, or does the renovation reality change everything? Drop your take in the comments. Genuinely curious how people weigh history against hard costs.

Wrapping Up

Villa Keen has been a dream, a Broadway home, a tech entrepreneur’s unfinished renovation, and now a listing again. Every person who has passed through those 15-foot stained glass gates has added a layer to what it is.

The next owner will not just be buying a castle. They will be deciding what chapter comes next.

If stories like this are your thing, Build Like New covers celebrity real estate, luxury market shifts, and the human side of big transactions. Worth bookmarking if you want more than just the headline.

For more stories in real time, follow Build Like New on X (Twitter) and join the conversation on the Facebook community. That is where these stories get discussed as they break.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. All details are based on publicly available listings and reports at the time of publication.