Oil Heiress Offloads $7.4 Million Historic Home in Cambridge, Massachusetts ~ Sportty

Oil Heiress Offloads $7.4 Million Historic Home in Cambridge, Massachusetts

A 19th-century home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a pedigree of famous owners changed hands late last month for $7.4 million, the highest sales price for the city in 2017, according to agents and MLS records.

For the past 20 years, the 20-room residence on Brattle Street in the Old Cambridge Historic District has been under the stewardship of Swanee Hunt, former U.S. ambassador to Austria. Ms. Hunt is also a political activist and daughter of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, who was believed to be the richest person in the world at the time of his death in 1974, with a net worth of over $1 billion.

Ms. Hunt and her late husband, renowned conductor Charles Ansbacher, who died in 2010, bought the house in 1997 for $2.8 million, property records show.

Ms. Hunt, 67, said she was awed by the history, the architecture, and the soul of the house. “It’s impossible to own a house with such a storied past; we were but stewards who created a home amid history,” she told Mansion Global.

During her ownership, Ms. Hunt entertained a crossroads of world-class scholars, artists, media shapers, and policy makers, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and cellist Yo Yo Ma, among others.