Who wouldn’t love their own private island?
During COVID lockdown, Christine and Edmund Stoecklein listed three private islands that are part of a Connecticut archipelago of around 100 islands known as the Thimble Islands.
Now the largest in this batch of sales, Wheeler Island, has sold for $2.99 million — close to its asking price of $3 million.
Christine is the widow of John Svenningsen, founder of Amscan Holdings, and bought many of the islands in the Thimbles in the late ’90s and early 2000s after his death.
The couple had first started going there in the 1970s, but relocated to Washington State.
The island is just 75 miles from Manhattan — and 19 miles from the Hamptons — and reachable by boat or water taxi.
The eight-bedroom, 4½-bath Victorian home was built in 2001 and was sold fully furnished.
The property sits on 0.77 acres. Daniel Milstein Photography
One of the island property’s eight bedrooms. Daniel Milstein Photography
A living room with a fireplace inside the Wheeler stunner. Daniel Milstein PhotographyIt sits on 0.77 acres and comes with rolling lawns, a sandy beach, its own dock and views of the Connecticut coast.
It features two wrap porches, a country kitchen and a generator.
There is also room to build a small pool, notes the listing — from Margaret Muir of William Pitt Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty. Muir also held the listings for the other two smaller islands, which sold during lockdown.
An outdoor patio dining area. Daniel Milstein Photography
Another colorful bedroom inside the Connecticut getaway. Daniel Milstein PhotographyThe first, Jepson Island, sold in July 2020 for $715,000 and included a two-bedroom modern cottage built with natural materials and walls of glass.
The second, Belsen Island, sold last May for $1.25 million and came with a four-bedroom cottage on 1 acre with 2 acres of deeded adjacent shellfish beds.
The couple sold a bigger island for $21.5 million in 2018. That 10-room mansion, on 7.5 acres, was developed in 1902 by Captain John Jay Phelps, a financier and yachtsman who was the first American to sail around the world via the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope.





