Skin-Care Couple Asks $23.5M For Former Ford Property

The last time we wrote about a Squabble Lane property, it was because tennis great John McEnroe had sold his house there. Now another high-profile property in that part of Southampton has hit the market, 6 Squabble Lane, with an ask of $23,500,000. The owners are the skin-care impresario Trish McEvoy and her dermatologist husband, Dr. Ronald Sherman.

The 8,500-square-foot manse was originally built in 1998 for Elena Ford (who we’ll get to in a minute), and renovated two years later by Preston Phillips, the Bridgehampton-based architect also known as the pride of Auburn University. The two-story contemporary has 7 bedrooms and 11.5 baths and sits on a 2.4-acre pond-front parcel. Amenities include a media room and exercise room inside and a heated pool outside as well as views of the Atlantic Ocean.

Aside from the obvious south-of-the-highway attributes, the property has the distinction of once being part of the Murray-McDonnell compound. The story of these two families can be found in the 1973 book by Stephen Birmingham titled “Real Lace: America’s Irish Rich” and one published four years later, “Golden Clan: The Murrays, the McDonnells & the Irish American Aristocracy,” by John Corry. The clan chronicled were the children and grandchildren of the inventor Thomas Murray, a colleague of Thomas Edison. These two generations helped form the first Southampton summer colony in the late 1800s. Their celebrity increased when one McDonnell daughter married Henry Ford II and a Murray married Alfred Vanderbilt, and the activities of the members of the intertwined families were covered by the press in New York and in the Hamptons. At one time, the collection of Murray and McDonnell estates in Southampton totaled 300 acres. Still to be found occasionally in the society pages are part-time resident Catherine Murray di Montezemolo and Peggy McDonnell, the wife of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

Now, with 6 Squabble Lane, there is another connection to the Ford family. The former owner, Elena Ford, is a great-granddaughter of Henry Ford, the founder of the car company, and she is the daughter of the heiress Charlotte Ford and the Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos. As the director of global marketing, a position she assumed in 2012, Elena Ford is the first female family member to hold a significant position at the Ford Motor Company.