The Southampton home of the famed movie actor Gary Cooper’s daughter, the painter Maria Cooper Janis, and her husband internationally renowned concert pianist Byron Janis is now listed at $12.95 million with Douglas Elliman.
The couple dropped the price on their 1.8-acre lakefront parcel at 208 Pond Lane four months after the home went on the market for the first time ever since it was built more than a half-century ago.
Veronica Balfe Cooper built the Pond Lane home in 1968. Known as Rocky, she was a New York City debutante who grew up on Park Avenue and pursued an acting career, and had been married to the two-time Academy Award–winning actor from 1933 to his death in 1961. She had long ties to Southampton; her parents built a house on Ox Pasture Road back in the 1920s, according to an interview her daughter, Cooper Janis, gave The Southampton Press in 2011.
The Coopers had spent time as a family in Southampton—when he we was not shooting movies in Hollywood—and his daughter told The Press he enjoyed being there, whether it was swimming in the ocean or going to the Southampton Beach Club. The star of The Pride of the Yankees, High Noon and countless other legendary films was laid to rest in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton.
Balfe Cooper later married Dr. John Marquis Converse, an internationally known plastic surgeon, and the couple lived in the home, located just off of Ox Pasture Road. Converse died in 1981, and she passed away in 2000.
Cooper Janis and her husband, who made his Carnegie Hall debut at 20 and is acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest pianists, own and live on the property with over 220 feet of frontage on Lake Agawam, which is about 200 feet from Southampton Village.
The 2,800-square-foot abode offers five bedrooms and three bathrooms. While modest by today’s standards, the property is in a prime location and features water views from many of the rooms. The pool overlooks the pond with a striking cherry tree nearby and landscaping that provides privacy, while an expansive lawn leads down to the lake.
The new owners could consider themselves among the luckiest buyers in Southampton.
[Listing: 208 Pond Lane, Southampton | Brokers: Laura Nigro and Carl Nigro, Douglas Elliman] GMAP
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