Loeb Family Sells In Water Mill For $5.25 Million

The Loeb family, with Judith Loeb listed as the official seller, has sold its south-of-the-highway property in Water Mill, for $5,250,000. The buyer is listed as the rather unimaginative 351 Jobs Lane LLC.

The house itself, built in 1993, is a tad modest, with 3 bedrooms and 1 bath and not many amenities beyond a fireplace. However, it is 2,574 square feet, which offers plenty of potential, and the best feature is its location, 1.4 acres near the ocean. A year or so from now, this could wind up being a completely transformed property.

Once again, we’re taking a peek at the people behind the property. The patriarch of the family was Joseph Langeloth Loeb Sr., born in 1902 and the son of German immigrants. Before his death in 1996, he had become one of the most successful Wall Street executives, and his family contributed hundreds of millions to philanthropic causes. In 1931, he co-founded Carl M. Loeb & Company, and six years later, after a merger, it became the firm Loeb, Rhoades. In the ensuing decades there were more mergers, with the company becoming even more successful.

According to Mr. Loeb’s New York Times obituary, he was “tall, imposing, impeccably dressed” and his “versatility and shrewdness, along with sizable amounts of capital, did much to nourish the success of Loeb, Rhoades. Among his many talents, admirers said, was a fine sense of timing. He managed to complete the sale of Loeb, Rhoades’s major holdings in Cuba, for example, the day before Fidel Castro came to power.” In 1978, his firm merged with Shearson Hayden Stone to form Shearson Loeb Rhoades, and three years later the company was acquired by American Express, and soon after Shearson/American Express merged with Lehman Brothers. Mr. Loeb continued to go to his office daily until a few weeks before his death at 94.

Judith Loeb, who passed away at 83 in 2010, was his oldest child. A son, John Loeb Jr., was a former U.S. ambassador to Denmark, and another son, Arthur, once owned the Madison Avenue Bookshop in Manhattan.