Rufus Wainwright renting out Montauk Leisurama cottage for $20,000 a month while he's on tour
Rufus Wainwright, seen Sunday in Manhattan, is renting out his Montauk home this summer while he tours in Europe. Credit: Getty Images/Dimitrios Kambouris
Grammy-nominated musician Rufus Wainwright is hoping someone will fall in not-so-"Foolish Love" with his Montauk home this summer.
Wainwright and husband Jorn Weisbrodt are seeking to rent out the two-bedroom cottage in Montauk from July through Labor Day. The pair shared the listing via Wainwright's official Instagram account this week.
The home is being offered for $20,000 a month — a total of $40,000 for the two-month rental — while he's on tour in Europe. Renters seeking a one-month rental would pay $20,000 for July or $25,000 for August, according to the Trulia listing linked on his Instagram.
The off-season beach cottage "exudes the aura of creativity a peaceful retreat by the ocean inspires," according to the listing.
Wainwright called Montauk "our spiritual home," adding, "It is the place that probably means the most to us as a family."
"We got married there," Wainwright wrote on Instagram. "Jorn and I really started our relationship in Montauk..."
Photos of the Wainwright cottage on Out East show the open kitchen and living room complete with wide wood plank floors, yellow formica kitchen countertops, a white-and-blue retro fridge and accompanying retro stove, beamed ceilings and a wall-mounted dolphin, not to mention an aqua blue-tiled bathroom featuring art of Dorothy, the Scarecrow and Tin Man. There's a huge blue and white "Montauk" pillow on the couch.
Out East notes there's also a hot tub.
The rental comes with beach access. And, of course, access to the piano.
Connections to New York's, Montauk's history
Wainwright, 52, is the son of acclaimed singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and folk singer Kate McGarrigle, descendent of Peter Stuyvesent, the 17th-century governor of New Amsterdam, now New York,
The cottage goes beyond the musical lineage of Wainwright, who stepped out of his father's shadow and into his own with his 1998 self-titled debut album — featuring a host of notable offerings, including "Danny Boy" and "April Fools."
The house is one of about 200 historic Leisurama homes in Montauk designed in the 1950s by Andrew Geller and sold in the early 1960s as pre-fabricated tract homes available for purchase through Macy's.
The design debuted at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, where it sparked the infamous "Kitchen Debate" between then-U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the latter arguing Americans had too many appliances.
A transcript, later released by the U.S. Embassy, offered this exchange:
Nixon, pointing to the dishwasher: "I want to show you this kitchen. It is like those of our houses in California."
Khrushchev: "We have such things."
When Nixon noted the range of appliances helped "make life easier for women," Khrushchev offered this retort: "Your capitalistic attitude toward women does not occur under Communism."
John Valenti, a Newsday reporter since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press, Society of the Silurians and National Headliner Awards for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing. He is the author of “Swee'pea,” about New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. His debut crime novel, “For Nothing Is Hidden,” rooted in 1950s Long Island, was released in October 2025.
