A sale is pending for Brooke Astor’s former $5.7 million Mount Desert Island estate after being on the market for more than a year and having its price reduced by $800,000.
The 3-acre estate, which the late socialite-philanthropist first acquired in the 1960s, overlooks Gilpatrick Cove in Northeast Harbor off Shore Road. Astor, who died nearly 20 years ago, spent roughly five decades summering at the exclusive property.
The colonial-style summer cottage, built in the early 1930s, is named Cove End and has 16 rooms, 10 bedrooms and six full baths. The property was first listed for sale by luxury real estate agency LandVest in April 2025 for $6.5 million. The estate is now listed by a separate brokerage — Sotheby’s International Realty — and its asking price has dropped to $5.7 million.
The pending sale will close the book on the aftermath of a scandal over Astor’s treatment in her final years, when she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Her son Anthony Marshall, who died in 2014, was eventually convicted of grand larceny for stealing from his mother’s estate while his wife, Charlene Marshall, was never criminally charged and ended up owning the property. She passed away nearly two years ago.
The estate is currently controlled by a trust tied to two of Charlene’s children from a previous relationship, according to Hancock County property records. Inness Hancock, Charlene’s daughter, did not respond to inquiries from the Bangor Daily News.
Carroll Fernald, the estate’s Sotheby listing agent, confirmed that the sale was pending but declined to provide any further information.
Astor, who donated more than $200 million of her family wealth to various New York and Maine institutions, never remarried after the 1959 passing of her husband Vincent Astor, heir to the Astor family fortune. They had been married for six years when the businessman — whose father famously died during the sinking of the Titanic — died of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment.
The 6,800-square-foot summer cottage features a swimming pool, stone terrace and a brightly-decorated interior with patterned wallpaper and arched doorways.
“Maine gave my grandmother something she couldn’t find anywhere else — the island, the community, a kind of rejuvenation that came from the quiet of its coast,” Astor’s grandson Philip Marshall said about the pending sale. “I hope the next stewards of the property find that same gift.”
The estate was assessed in 2026 at $2.6 million, according to the town’s property records.
Astor, whose will was rewritten some 45 times, according to the New York Times, died in 2007 at the age of 105. Towards the end of her life, Anthony Marshall — Astor’s only child — and his wife Charlene Marshall were accused of mistreating the socialite and taking control of her fortune as her mental state declined. Anthony Marshall was charged and convicted of elder abuse in New York in 2009 and Charlene, though never prosecuted, was largely blamed for the scandal.
Philip Marshall, Astor’s grandson, first brought a civil suit against his father in 2006 in connection with his handling of his grandmother’s assets. The younger Marshall previously said that his father had transferred the estate to his own name in 2003, which was “one of the early red flags.”
“My grandmother’s abuse began in Maine, and I’ve watched with real respect as Maine has taken a leadership role in protecting older adults,” Philip Marshall said Thursday. “That leadership matters here more than almost anywhere — Maine is the oldest state in the nation, and its older residents’ contributions deserve to be respected and protected, not just discussed.”