The palatial estate which housed the president of the University of Miami for more than 40 years was sold for a whopping $9 million, the Miami Herald reported.
The 4.6 acre Coral Gables home, which was built in 1965 and donated to UM in 1974, was purchased by New Yorker Maria Montalva.
Proceeds from the sale of the home will go toward academic initiatives on campus, including five professorships, four in the college of Arts and Sciences and one in the School of Architecture.
The home, which includes lush gardens and a bayside view, has welcomed a spectrum of freshmen students and more notably, the Dalai Lama.
According to the Herald, UM has been designing and building a replacement house in Pinecrest for current UM president Donna Shalala. The land was donated by a UM law graduate Frank Smathers Jr.
The development consists of thirty homes within a gated community called Smathers Four Fillies Farm, and houses exclusively UM faculty. The estates were originally used to keep the environmental and botanical integrity of the center intact.
The homes will be built to mirror UM's mascot, the Ibis, with its clean white exterior and modern architecture.
Local
"What was tricky here is we didn't want it to look granola," Phyllis Taylor, decorator of Shalala's new home, told the Herald.
Although the property is smaller in size, it compensates its quarter acre size with 9,000 square feet of interior space, modern touches, and a functioning elevator.
The community itself has a pool, tennis courts, gardens and a clubhouse.
