Calvin Klein's $30 Million Hamptons Teardown

Fashion mogul Calvin Klein is going to tear down Elysium, the historic Southampton castle he bought three years ago for almost $30 million from Manhattan investor Francesco Galesi.

According to a source close to the designer, Klein will raze the estate on tony Meadow Lane (neighbors include developer Aby Rosen, who recently renovated his beachfront mansion) and have a new one in construction by next summer.

He wants something more like the elegant Georgica Association house in the Wainscott section of East Hampton Town that his ex-wife, Kelly Klein, got in their divorce.

Elysium is a 45,000-square-foot Gothic-style castle that sits on 10-acres between the ocean and Shinnecock Bay. Built by Henry F. duPont in 1929 as a Georgian-style mansion called Chesteron, it was the largest house in the Hamptons before industrialist Ira Rennert built a sprawling 100,000-square-foot spread in Sagaponack in 1999.

The duPont family sold the estate in 1979 to trucking entrepreneur Barry Trupin for $330,000, who renovated the house into a flashy French chateau with garish turrets and a shark tank and rechristened it "Dragon's Head."

Galesi bought it from Trupin for $2.3 million in 1993. He then put it on the market for $45 million about seven years ago and knocked the price down.

by Deborah Schoeneman

_{Condé Nast Portfolio contributor Deborah Schoeneman, who is also editor in chief of Hampton Style, reports on executives in the Hamptons.}