Rich Cribs: $14 million Old Westbury home, and more

IS IT PARADISE? If the grotto pool at this Old Westbury home newly listed for $14 million looks familiar, it should — the owner modeled the space after Atlantis, Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

The space cost $2 million to build, says listing agent Shawn Elliott of Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes & Estates. It features a Jacuzzi, three waterfalls, fire pits, three plasma TVs, a water slide, a bathroom with an outdoor shower, and a swim-up bar with four seats. Outside the pool, there’s another bar, with an outdoor kitchen, stove, refrigerator, ice maker, dishwater and one of those TVs.

And there’s a second pool inside the seven-bedroom house — surrounded by six floor-to-ceiling tanks with stingrays, sharks, puffers, angel fish and other exotic sea life, all of which stays with the home. -- Valerie Kellogg

JUDGE'S CHAMBERS. This 4,700-square-foot Westhampton residence on the market for $4.9 million used to be part of a 48-acre estate once belonging to the late Judge Harold Medina.

Known nationally as the federal judge who presided over the trials of 11 leaders of the U.S. Communist Party in 1949, he was locally famous for staging fireworks every Fourth of July.

The 2.4-acre property has a boathouse-guesthouse (it sleeps four), a three-room garage apartment (it sleeps two), a children’s playhouse, 250 feet of bayfront bulkheads and a 50-foot dock.

Medina built the seven-bedroom, 6½-bath house for his mother. It was renovated in 2004 by the current owners, Medina’s granddaughter Meredith and her husband, Robert Murray. They are also The Corcoran Group’s co-listing agents for the property. -- Ann Smukler

HIDDEN NO MORE. If you can lead a horse to water, lead it to Hidden Pond — an in-progress Old Westbury development of 16 custom homes on two-acre lots created from the old Francis “Skiddy” Von Stade Sr. estate.

Anyone with equine-imity will recognize the name as that of the bristle-importer who became a champion polo player, a steward of the Jockey Club, president of the Saratoga Association and founder of the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs. He was, as well, the mayor of Old Westbury from 1940 to 1950.

After his death in 1967, the estate was purchased by the Entenmann family, and later, says Keven Wandy, director of sales and marketing for the Hempstead-based developer Stewart Senter Inc., it went to the Solomon Schechter Day School Association.

Hidden Pond eventually went to the investment firm M West Holdings, which now promises to build a horse-lover’s dream locale. Located in the sought-after Jericho School District close by the Old Westbury Equestrian Center, the Glen Oaks Club and the Old Westbury Golf & Country Club, Hidden Pond has a pond — two acres, with fish and two water plumes. At the moment, it has a sales center where, says Wandy, plans from six to ten architects are available as springboards for each custom home. The lots, he says, run from $1.3 million to $1.7 million each. Above that, the homes would cost $1.5 million to $3 million.  -- Frank Lovece