New Beginnings

Girl around town, Hollywood fixture, beauty entrepreneur—Cassandra Grey has lived many lives. In an 18th-century, upstate New York home, she starts again.

- By Lauren Mechling. Photographed by Norman Jean Roy.

When Cassandra Grey moved into her 240-year-old house in Hudson, New York, she found a letter waiting for her. It was a handwritten note from an earlier owner, informing Grey that she would be sharing the residence with a ghost. Hudson Bush Farm, as the 29-acre estate is known, was originally built in 1785 by Hendrick I. Van Rensselaer, a Revolutionary War veteran who belonged to one of early America's wealthiest families. In addition to entertaining and hosting Federalist bigwigs (Alexander Hamilton was a guest), Van Rensselaer was known for pouring himself three glasses of wine before retiring and toasting to God, country, and George Washington. According to the letter, his spirit would cause a commotion unless three glasses of tipple were left out for him.

"We have the exact kind of Madeira that he liked," Grey says.

On the Friday in October when I visit the house, no spectral presence is making itself felt. The home is instead humming with life: There's an unfinished jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table. Sheet music belonging to Grey's 10-year-old son, Jules (from her marriage to the late Brad Grey, former chairman and chief executive of Paramount Pictures), is propped up on the baby grand. Later on, friends will arrive for an overnight stay, and the dining table is already half set for the Bolognese pasta dinner that Grey plans to cook. Her laptop sits open on the living room sofa, where she's spent the morning workshopping an installment of her newly launched Substack—a post on astrology, sobriety, and The Jeffersons theme song. Outside, a gaggle of chickens is clucking merrily.