Taylor Swift's Private Beach Mansion Cost Her $17.75 Million

Aug 18, 2021 by apost team

Taylor Swift is one of the most popular musical artists on the planet and has sold over 200 million records worldwide. She sings, writes all of her songs, and plays the guitar. One of the remarkable things about Swift is the way she tells stories through her songs. However, this is something that has also gotten her into trouble on occasion.

One way to describe Swift is as a dreamy romantic, but she can also play the role of a scorned lover. Her songs often call out her famous ex-boyfriends, and she is not afraid to lay out her side of the story for the world to witness. In fact, Swift is so popular that her breakup songs almost always top the Billboard charts.

Though many may want to side with the slighted ex-boyfriends, Swift has a large enough fan following to keep her successes on the covers of magazines. The artist has taken home 11 Grammy Awards throughout her legendary career, and she is only 31-years-old. Swift shows no sign of slowing down as her last two albums have received critical and commercial success.

Swift grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when she was 14 to pursue a career as a country-pop singer. She moved back to the East coast as an adult in 2013. The superstar owns the famous mansion High Watch, or as it is historically known, Holiday House. 

The estate is located in the Watch Hill neighborhood of Westerly, Rhode Island. Swift has made waves in Watch Hill by blocking off the private beach on her property and bringing in dozens of celebrity guests for her lavish parties. Read on to learn more about High Watch and Swift's reputation in Rhode Island.  

The mega-star is undeniably adored by fans all over the world, but that doesn't keep her from being criticized by the media. Swift told Vanity Fair in 2013, "I'm sick of the tabloids' saying I obsess over guys. Why would you obsess over guys? They don't like it." 

Swift denies the persona of the troublesome ex-girlfriend. "Everybody in these tabloid gossipy blogs, they think they have you pegged, like 'Taylor's boy-crazy.' And it's why I have to avoid the tabloid part of our culture because they turn you into a fictional character," she said. 

Swift continued, "I've never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I've only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up. When I write songs it's never a conscious decision. I never know when I'm gonna get an idea and I never know what it's gonna be."

"I'm work-crazy," Swift elaborated. "That's the thing that I'm crazy about, that I don't stop thinking about, you know? I think they need to make up these angles because my actual personal life doesn't have a shocking angle to it: I go to work. I come home. I occasionally go out with my friends. I occasionally go on dates. No one's gonna click on that. They're only gonna click on it if they ask some ludicrous question that isn't slander because it's got a question mark at the end of it."

Getting bogged down by gossip in tabloid magazines is not something Swift struggles with. The artist is always unapologetically herself, even if others don't like it. This was the situation when she purchased High Watch and began stirring up controversy in Rhode Island.

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The luxurious estate known as High watch, or Holiday House, was bought by Swift in 2013 for $17.75 million. It has 16 rooms, 10.5 bathrooms, and eight fireplaces. The asking price was $24 million, but the superstar agreed to pay in cash and received a discount. Attached to her property is a private beach, which was public until she bought the mansion. This caused some bitterness amongst the community that had grown accustomed to visiting that area of the beach prior to 2013. 

The home was built in 1930 for the Harkness family, who are the heirs to Standard Oil. The former owner, Rebekah Harkness, had a reputation for causing controversy in the community as well. Much like Swift, Harkness loved to throw parties for all of her celebrity friends, and the traffic they brought to the town was notable. Swift faces the same criticism every year when she throws a large party for the fourth of July. 

In typical Taylor Swift fashion, the singer released a song in 2020 about Harkness and the history of her beloved home. The song is called "The Last Great American Dynasty" and draws parallels between Harkness's life and Swift. There is one line in the song that says: "Who knows, if I never showed up, what could've been / There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything." It has been said that the song shows Swift's dismissal of the issues she has with the town. Her attitude is very reminiscent of Harkness, who was unbothered by her reputation and went on enjoying her life.

What do you think of the controversy between Taylor Swift and the community of Watch Hill? Are you a fan of her music? Let us know your opinion, and be sure to pass this along to your friends and family.