A $20 million house designed by Jim Olson of Olson Kundig, built specifically to hold one of the greatest private art collections in America, on 300 feet of Lake Washington waterfront, next door to Bill Gates. After Barney died, Jeff Bezos bought it for $37.5 million.
In 2000, Barney moved from St. Louis to Hunts Point, Washington — one of the most exclusive addresses in America. A tiny peninsula jutting into Lake Washington, Hunts Point is home to Bill Gates, other tech billionaires, and some of the most expensive real estate in the Pacific Northwest.
Barney commissioned architect Jim Olson of Olson Kundig — one of the most celebrated architectural firms in the world — to design a home that would serve a dual purpose: a place to live and a gallery for his art collection.
Living space designed around the art. Every wall, every sight line, every light source was planned to showcase the paintings.
Waterfront estate on the shores of Lake Washington. Privacy, nature, and a world-class view.
Three hundred feet of Lake Washington shoreline. Direct water access. Seattle skyline and Cascade Mountain views.
Large enough for boats and seaplanes. Barney could arrive home by water or by air.
Construction cost, 2003–2004. A custom architectural masterpiece by one of the world's best firms.
After Barney's death, listed for $45M, sold April 2019 to Jeff Bezos. Then a Seattle-area record.
Olson described the house as "both about nature and about art, a backdrop for both." The architecture was deliberately restrained — the art and the lake were the stars. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the water. Interior walls were designed as gallery surfaces. The house was, in essence, a museum that happened to have a kitchen and a bedroom.
Hunts Point and the surrounding Medina/Clyde Hill area is where the new American aristocracy lives:
In this neighborhood of tech billionaires, Barney stood out. His wealth was old-school — travel companies, cruise lines, art — not stock options. He arrived at Hunts Point with $400 million in paintings and a father who grew up at Buckingham Palace. In a world of hoodies and algorithms, Barney wore suits and collected Hoppers.
The most poignant "what if" of Barney's life.
In 2010, he sold Andy Warhol's Big Campbell's Soup Can for $23.8 million — specifically to finance the construction of a chapel designed by Tadao Ando, the legendary Japanese architect known for the Church of the Light in Osaka and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis.
The design was extraordinary: a triangular chapel with glassed-in walls cantilevered over a reflecting pool. A place of meditation and spiritual reflection for the Ebsworth family. Estimated cost: $10 to $20 million. Barney traded a Warhol to build an Ando.
But the world said no. Community opposition blocked construction first in the Bridle Trails neighborhood of Bellevue, where residents objected to the project. It was relocated to a site near Interlaken Park in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, but residents there also objected, dismissing the project as a "vanity temple."
The chapel was never built. Design models and perspective drawings survive at the Art Institute of Chicago.
It is one of art history's great tragedies: a man sold one of the most iconic images in American pop art — Warhol's soup can — to create a transcendent work of architecture by one of the world's greatest living architects, and NIMBYism killed it. The Warhol is gone. The chapel exists only on paper.
Tadao Ando on Wikipedia ↗ • Pulitzer Arts Foundation (also by Ando) ↗
When Barney died on April 9, 2018, the estate held approximately $400 million in combined assets: the art collection ($323M at auction), the house ($37.5M sale price), and remaining business interests and investments.
The art went to Christie's. The house went to Bezos. The Echo sculpture stands in the Olympic Sculpture Park. A double-height gallery at the Seattle Art Museum bears the Ebsworth name.
The boy who grew up on one and a half paychecks, playing cricket in St. Louis, left behind a legacy measured in hundreds of millions of dollars — and, more importantly, in the thousands of people who experienced beauty because of the art he collected, the ships he built, and the journeys he made possible.