A 127-room castle, a hotel and weddings until 2028: What the $72 million Oheka Castle deal that featured in Taylor Swift's Blank Space includes

Oheka Castle, the Long Island estate in Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” video, has a new owner. It sold for $72 million at a live auction on Tuesday, Oct. 27, Concierge Auctions said.

The auction was held at The Dominick hotel in New York City. Concierge Auctions ran it with Adam Modlin of The Modlin Group. More than 740 prospective buyers worldwide had shown interest, but the sale came down to seven bidders. They pushed the price to its final figure.

The property has 127 rooms and covers 112,895 square feet on 23 acres in Huntington, New York. It’s the second-largest private home ever built in the United States. The reports so far haven’t named the buyer.

The sale followed a bankruptcy that began in 2025

The previous owner was Gary Melius, a Long Island developer. In July 2025, the company that owns the castle, Kahn Property Owner LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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Chapter 11 lets a debtor keep operating while it deals with what it owes. Here, the filing was also meant to stop a foreclosure sale. In a foreclosure, a lender forces the sale of a property to recover unpaid debt.

The debt goes back more than a decade. Melius defaulted on a $28 million loan, and with unpaid interest and fees the amount owed grew past $50 million. An investor bought that defaulted loan in 2023 for about $25 million.

The auction had no starting bid, so the first offer could have been any amount. Bidders had to put down a $750,000 deposit to take part. The bankruptcy court approved the auction plan in September 2026.

The castle isn’t only a landmark. It runs as a hotel and a venue for weddings and events. Court-approved rules require the buyer to honour every wedding and event already booked through March 31, 2028.

For the new owner, that means existing commitments come with the keys. The business has to keep running for those bookings. The venue has hosted celebrity weddings, including those of Kevin Jonas, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Joey Fatone and Anthony Weiner.

Inside, the castle has a grand staircase modelled on France’s Château de Fontainebleau and a ballroom with 24-foot ceilings. There’s a library with hand-restored faux-bois walls, which are painted to look like wood. There are also 34 guest suites.

A house built for one banker, rescued from decay

Financier and arts patron Otto Hermann Kahn built the castle between 1914 and 1919. The name comes from his own; Otto HErmann KAhn. Construction cost about $11 million at the time, and the architects were Delano & Aldrich.

The house is made of steel and concrete, so it would survive a fire. It stands at the highest point on Long Island, less than 40 miles from Midtown Manhattan.

Kahn died in 1934, and the estate was sold several years later. Over the decades the building deteriorated. Before 1984, it sat abandoned for about five years and was vandalised.

Melius bought it that year for $1.5 million. He spent about $40 million on restoration, which Concierge Auctions has called the largest private residential restoration in American history. The castle became a wedding venue in 1987.

In 1988, Melius sold it to Hideki Yokoi for $22.5 million because he couldn’t keep financing the project. He later got it back, first through a long-term lease and then by buying it again.

Melius paid $1.5 million in 1984. The castle has now sold for $72 million, 42 years later.