An Anonymous $26M Purchase, And David Cohen Buys A $4.9M Pad, Both In Southampton

One would think a sale of a $26 million property would top any article. Okay, yes, this article will be no exception. But soon we’ll get to a significantly less expensive house in the Village of Southampton that is rather intriguing.

The big eight-figure deal, also in that village, is 7 Olde Towne Lane. The 11,500-square-foot residence has 10 bedrooms and 13.5 baths and sits majestically on a 4-acre, fully landscaped lot. There are plenty of goodies packed into the property: pool, spa, tennis court, attached cottage, six fireplaces, billiard room, theater, gym, entertainment lounge, wine room and even an elevator. With the original ask being $29,900,000, the new owner got a bargain! Alas, we don’t know who that new owner is because his, or her, identity is shielded behind the limited liability company Oldetownhouse LLC.

In contrast, the new owners of a house on South Magee Street are David Elliot Cohen and Laureen Seeger. By laying out $4,852,000, they received a home just more than 7,000 square feet on 0.78 acre built two decades ago. The residence contains 7 bedrooms and 8.5 baths and is, we’re told, “two miles from both world-class beaches and Jobs Lane shopping and restaurants.”

To some, Mr. Cohen might be known as a publisher, having produced more than 70 photography books during the last 30 years. Some of them have been bestsellers, including “A Day in the Life of America” and “America 24/7.” Another book of photographs was “What Matters,” which combined images with essays by Bill McKibben, Samantha Powers and others.

But two books by the Buffalo-born Mr. Cohen of a more personal nature attracted attention too. The first was “One Year Off,” published in 1999. It chronicled a 16-month trip around the world by land, sea and air he took with his wife and three children. The second one, titled “The Wrong Dog,” was published earlier this year. In 2014, when Ms. Seeger, Mr. Cohen’s second wife (she was previously married to the chef Guenter Seeger), was named general counsel of American Express, the blended family of five children had to relocate to New York from the West Coast. However, their 14-year-old dog, Simba, was considered too fragile to endure a cross-country flight. So, Mr. Cohen, accompanied by a friend, loaded the 90-pound Labrador retriever into a station wagon and embarked on a 3,000-mile-drive. Along the way, they make stops at famous and not-so-famous landmarks.

Does Simba survive the journey? Mr. Cohen told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “All dog books end with a death, so the question is: How did the dog die? In this case, the death was a poetic death.” Perhaps locals will encounter Mr. Cohen and Simba II strolling in Agawam Park this summer.