Earlier this week, we reported that Bill and Melinda Gates shocked the world when they announced that they are divorcing after 27 years of marriage. Now, it’s been revealed that the billionaire couple has a lakefront mansion in Washington to split up in the wake of their split.
Fox Business reported that construction on their home in Medina, Washington, a mansion that is nicknamed “Xanadu 2.0,” began before Bill and Melinda got married in 1994. They moved into the 48,160 square foot home in 1997, and property records show its value is appraised at more than $130 million today.
In 2019, Melinda told The New York Times Magazine that she was “really looking forward to the day that Bill and I live in a 1,500-square-foot house.” She added that “the house was being built before I came on the scene,” indicating that she may let Bill keep it unchallenged in this divorce.
Property records show that the home includes seven bedrooms and 18 bathrooms. In 1997, U.S. News & World Report reported that it has “multiple kitchens, a formal dining room that sits up to 24, and a 2,300-square-foot reception hall that can host up to 200, a 20-seat art deco theater and a 2,100-square-foot library with a domed reading room, fireplace, bar hidden behind a bookcase and the Codex Leicester, a 16th-century Leonardo da Vinci notebook.”
The mansion is located on a 5.15-acre property with 475 feet of Lake Washington waterfront. The property also includes a putting green, sports court, two docks, a boathouse and a sandy beach that purportedly had sand imported from Hawaii.
This comes days after Bill and Melinda announced that they are divorcing, as their marriage is “irretrievably broken.”
“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” they said in a statement. “Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.”
“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives,” their statement concluded. “We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.”
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