Real LI

The Old Westbury house that once belonged to famed architect Thomas Hastings just went on the market for $12.5 million.

The red brick house, known as "Bagatelle," was built in 1913. There are 10 bedrooms, seven baths and three half-baths, as well as 11 fireplaces. There is a pool, a tennis court and three brick cottages on the 4.3-acre property.

The taxes are $65,200 a year.

The house is across the street from the last remaining piece of the Phipps estate, which was put up for sale last week. The manor house was owned by Cynthia Phipps, a horse breeder who died in October from injuries she suffered in a kitchen fire inside her Manhattan apartment. The rest of the Phipps estate -- about 158 acres -- were sold in 2004 to the Kean Development Co. of Cold Spring Harbor, which paid close the $35 million asking price. Some 22 homes, on four-acre lots, have been approved for the site, says Fred Carillo, deputy mayor of Old Westbury and chairman of the planning board.

Thomas Hastings was a partner Carrere & Hastings, which designed the New York Public Library, as well as many other monumental buildings and homes in New York and around the country. On Long Island, Frank Goodyear, William Rockefeller, E.H. Harriman, Alfred du Pont and others commissioned the firm to design their houses. Hastings also designed two of the Pratt houses on the North Shore

Hastings designed Bagatelle for he and his wife, Helen Ripley Benedict, known as a horse woman. "The idea was that we were living on Long Island, where the principal interest of the residents is horses and everything that has to do with horses," Hastings is quoted as saying in the 1997 book "Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects., 1860-1940" (W.W. Norton and Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, $85).

"Once in a decade a home of this magnitude comes on the market," says Aileen Murstein, who is listing the property with Francine Soltz, Robin Bender and Robin Kapner, of the East Hills office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. "It's a treasure."

According to public records, the house now belongs to the Abraham and Soraya Ostad, who have owned the house 28 years. Abraham Ostad is a urologist in Brooklyn and a real estate investor.

The listing is with Aileen Murstein, with Francine Soltz and Robin Bender, of the East Hills office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.