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"The Last Great American Dynasty" references Taylor's massive Rhode Island mansion (where she used to hold her annual Fourth of July parties) and tells the story of the house's previous owner, Rebekah West Harkness. Taylor Swift and the State of Rhode Island have their own contentious history. First, as soon as she bought the house in 2013, came grumblings from locals about traffic created by the flood of fans who just wanted to see the house.
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But she did hang on to one LA property — the 1934 Georgian Revival estate she purchased for a whopping $25 million. As a proper Newport mansion would, Ocean Lawn, built in 1889, has 515 feet of ocean frontage, 13 bedrooms and 10 full bathrooms and one half bathroom, and his-and-hers libraries. It's owned by professional drag racer Alexis DeJoria, daughter of John Paul DeJoria, the co-founder of the Paul Mitchell hair care products line and the Patron Spirits Company.
High Watch
Bow became one of the biggest movie stars of the 1920s, reaching a stratospheric level of stardom that exceeded her dreams without actually fulfilling them. A true Brooklyn girl, she never got “cultured,” and never put on fake airs, like other Hollywood transplants from Brooklyn did. She was kind not just to people who could help her, but to crew members and performers who were coming up behind her. She was, for a time, engaged to Hollywood director supreme Victor Fleming; then she fell hard for shy, strapping, ethereally handsome Gary Cooper—because, well, who wouldn’t? There were scandals—mostly not of her own making, but resulting from the greed of others—that cost her several small fortunes to clean up. She made 46 silent films and 11 talking pictures before essentially leaving the business, in 1931, after suffering a breakdown.
Delevingne and others took to Instagram to show the fun they were having.
On the 2019 album Lover, she sang about her former New York City carriage house in the song “Cornelia Street,” and on the brand-new surprise album she released on July 24, Folklore, there’s another tune about once of her residences. “The Last Great American Dynasty” tells the story of a woman named Rebekah, who, the lyrics explain, married the heir to the Standard Oil fortune and purchased a home called Holiday House. After his death, she was disliked by “the Rhode Island set” for her raucous parties. It turns out that Swift's Holiday House has a long history of wealth and lavish parties, and is renowned among locals for its coastal views.
Misquamicut State Beach
The company was the largest oil refiner in the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which made Rebekah one of the richest women in the US. Because of their wealth and love for the lavish lifestyle, the Harkness couple purchased the mansion in Watch Hill, RI, which they nicknamed The Holiday House. Taylor Swift’s new album, Folklore, was released today, and we’re obsessing over one song in particular that tells the story of the former owners of Swift's Rhode Island home, known as Holiday House. The song, titled “The Last Great American Dynasty,” is based on the lives of Rebekah West Harkness (known as "Betty"), a composer and philanthropist who founded Harkness Ballet, and her husband, William Hale “Bill” Harkness, whose family founded Standard Oil.

There are gorgeous views of Fishers Island Sound, Little Narragansett Bay, and the Watch Hill Lighthouse.
The first a Cape Cod-style cottage for $4 million, the other a smaller single-story home she used as a guesthouse for $2.65 million. The house was built by Guilford Dudley Jr., a former US ambassador to Denmark. The quiet neighborhood isn’t a typical choice for A-listers, which is probably one of the reasons she chose it. It’s rumored that her song “The Last Great American Dynasty” was inspired by this property. The property has seven bedrooms and six bathrooms and includes a three-bedroom apartment next door for Swift’s security team.
Step Inside Taylor Swift's Eight Multimillion-Dollar Homes - ELLE Decor
Step Inside Taylor Swift's Eight Multimillion-Dollar Homes.
Posted: Tue, 03 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Rather than lavish paintings, Swift opted for black-and-white photos of her friends and family — which seemingly line one of her hallway walls. Several other friends of the super star have also shared photos inside the home’s white kitchen. The Snowdens, beginning with George Grant Snowden's father, James McKean Snowden, who was born in 1831 and lived in Pittsburgh, had made their fortune in oil and gas exploration. George Grant Snowden and his brother, James Hastings Snowden, explored for oil first in Pennsylvania and then in Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The Snowden family is of Welsh descent, with ties to Welsh, English, and Scottish royals.

You can see Swift giving her guests the tour.
She also added some vintage red rugs and velvet couches to give it a warmer feeling. There was even one on the top of the toilet; I have never seen anything like that before. Most people have some potpourri or some flowers, but she had a Grammy Award on her loo,” he said. A Taylor Swift superfan spilled the details on everything he saw when he was invited inside the pop star’s $50 million New York City home. Everything you need to know about the famous New York hotel and its relation to Taylor Swift. But not long after her win, she awoke one night to find her mother poised over her with a butcher’s knife, intent on killing her, though Sarah fainted before she was able to go through with it.
The “A Thousand Miles” singer has been posting snapshots of her family's circa 1803 Federal Colonial home on Instagram since 2021. In 2014, there was a kerfuffle involving Westerly putting his house up for auction due to him owing $8,000 in back taxes, but it was quickly resolved when the taxes were paid. A playground for the rich and the famous during the Gilded Age, the shorelines are dotted with mansions.
With its old-money summer colony — a cohort of privacy-loving, multigenerational families tucked into century-old shingled houses — and its diminutive main drag, the picturesque Bay Street, this town is a curious choice for a megawatt celebrity like Ms. Swift, 26. (Why not the billionaire-infested potato fields of the Hamptons?) And High Watch is a peculiar spot for such a celebrity to hole up, given its fishbowl site and proximity to the public beach, with an access path that runs along its property line. Despite Swift’s jet-set life, she stuck to her roots when purchasing her second Nashville home, a sprawling Greek Revival known as Northumberland Estate.
She spends a lot of time touring and in Nashville, but she does have a farm in Rhode Island and has talked about it publicly as recently as February 2023. She bought the farm during the pandemic and told the Illinois Entertainer that they have goats, donkeys and some other farm animals. Front and center are the ocean views, of course, but also the garden, which was carefully cultivated by the home’s previous owner, late Campbell Soup heiress Dorrance H. Hamilton, who was known for her love of gardens and helped start the Newport Flower Show.
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