A wall that was always a fence, a century-old sewer pipe and a hedge that needed a second vote: one Lake Erie village spent its autumn vetting the most famous couple in America, who sent their architect.
The most talked-about privacy wall in America is a fence. It is to stand six feet high, in black powder-coated aluminium, around a lakefront house in Bratenahl, Ohio. A village board approved it on a Tuesday in September, and nobody on the board voted against it.
The internet preferred the first draft. An eight-foot design was considered early on, and those extra two feet have had a long afterlife. As late as November, one widely syndicated headline still had neighbours rallying behind an “8-Foot Privacy Wall”. The neighbours had not quite rallied. Some welcomed the newcomers warmly, and some of those living closest objected at length. The vote that closed the season, on 10 November, was about shrubs.
For Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the autumn has been an education in the small-town architectural review board. This is an institution that meets once a month, posts its transcripts and takes a close interest in how tall your trees will grow. The couple were married at Madison Square Garden on 3 July. Bratenahl made them wait for their shrubs.
Where is the house, and who bought it?
Bratenahl is a lakeshore village small enough to sum up in a breath. One resident who welcomed the couple did exactly that for Page Six: about four miles long, and roughly 1,200 people. Kelce grew up in Cleveland Heights, so the Lake Erie shore is home ground for one of the pair. The other already has addresses in Rhode Island, Beverly Hills, Nashville and New York City, and she has never been short of a view.
The house is much older than anyone arguing about it. ESPN reported that it was built in 1895 and runs to 21,140 square feet, and Hello! put the grounds at 3.5 acres on the edge of the lake. Gary Pellegrino’s Figurati Construction Group bought it in 2023, restored it and put it back on the market, and The Agency Cleveland brokered the sale. A builder rescues a Victorian house on a Great Lake, and a tight end from down the road buys it. Even the plot has a Midwestern tidiness to it.
The reporting names Kelce as the buyer. Who holds the title, and in what form, has not been made public, and nothing about the arrangement should be read into the hedge. Before the village, the plans have been presented as the couple’s. On the agenda, at least, they are a pair.
What did he pay for it?
ESPN reported that Kelce closed in March for $5.35 million, buying directly from Figurati. The restored house had come to market at a good deal more and had been cut once before he arrived. The final price landed well below the first asking figure, which suggests that even a famous buyer at the top of a small market can wait for the price to come down.
Other houses for sale in the village were listed at a fraction of that. In a place this size, a sale like this is less a transaction than a change in the weather.
There is no published figure for what the fence or the planting will cost. Given that the purchase came in under the asking price, the shrubs are unlikely to trouble anyone’s accountant.
Was there ever an eight-foot wall?
Only as a first idea. The couple considered an eight-foot fence, revised the design down to six feet, and the revised version was approved unanimously on 8 September. TMZ’s account of the meeting transcript describes a six-foot black, powder-coated aluminium fence. It is to sit about two feet inside the property line to stay clear of the sewer lines. Even the fence was positioned with the drains in mind.
“Wall” sounds better in a headline, and a fence round a famous house reads as a fortress whatever it is made of. The September approval still met local resistance. Chuck Bauernschmidt, who lives two doors down, criticised what he called the “clear cutting” of shrubbery and warned, Page Six reported, that deer could impale themselves on the fence. That is his warning and his prediction. It may be the first time in American planning history that a Swift-adjacent structure has been opposed on behalf of the deer.
The case for a fence was set out by the house itself. In September, Page Six reported that someone had trespassed on the property and been warned off by an audio alert. The house was already talking to strangers.
Who decides what goes up in Bratenahl?
The village’s Architectural Review Board decides. By the village’s own description, it meets on the second Tuesday of the month as needed, and its agendas are published before each meeting. The village also posts transcripts of its meetings. That is how a debate about the root systems of evergreens in a lakeshore suburb came to be read by people who could not find Ohio on a map.
The board’s work is unglamorous: brick, hedges, the height of things, where a boundary runs. Most applicants are adding a porch or replacing a garage door. This applicant arrived with a property manager, an architect and a project manager, and the proceedings carried on in their usual way regardless.
Swift and Kelce did not attend the November meeting. They were represented by property manager Patrick Hyland, architect Derek Kuryla and project manager Jacob Kutz, who presented drawings to a room of neighbours as any homeowner’s team would. The two most photographed people in America were absent, and the people present talked about evergreens. There is something pleasingly level about it.
Why did the shrubs cause more trouble than the fence?
A fence is a single decision. Planting goes on deciding things for years. At the 6 October meeting the board approved the front-yard landscaping but declined to approve the rear-yard tree plan, because members were concerned about how tall the trees would grow. Fences are argued about in feet, trees in decades.
The objections were specific. One speaker spoke for an older woman who has lived nearby for more than 50 years and did not want trees between her and the lake, or the sunset over it. Anyone who has bought a house for its view will recognise the fear. In a village on Lake Erie, the view is most of the point of living there.
Katherine Bolton, the next-door neighbour, raised the sewer line again. She was concerned about evergreens planted near a century-old shared sewer line, and she said, according to Page Six, that she had been quoted $75,000 to protect the pipe from tree roots. That is her quote and her worry. Whether the roots will ever find the pipe is a question for the years ahead, and possibly for a plumber.
The other side of the village was louder and cheerier. Residents described as “Team Taylor” told the objectors to “shake it off”, which, in a hearing about shrubs, is about as close as local politics gets to a mic drop. Vasiliki Diamantis, a resident, said the village should feel privileged that the couple had chosen it. A famous new neighbour divides a street much as a new conservatory does, only with more press.
Did the neighbours lose?
They lost the vote and kept their seats at the table. On 10 November, at the Bratenahl Community Center, the board unanimously approved the couple’s revised plans, according to Page Six. The plans include 10-foot shrubs planted for privacy and updated brickwork. Around 35 people came, and several raised concerns about the shrubs. Losing, in Bratenahl, looks like this: a hearing, a say, a revised drawing and a unanimous vote.
The day before, Page Six ran a piece in which a local resident said the criticism had been blown out of proportion. An anonymous neighbour who lives minutes from the house put it more briefly.
“I don’t think people are angry.”
That may be the most Midwestern sentence spoken during the whole affair. It is also roughly where the record leaves things. There is no lawsuit and no appeal on file, and neither Swift nor Kelce has said anything publicly about fences, trees or sewers. No moving-in date has been announced. The predictions about roots and deer, and about what the couple might do next, belong to the people who made them.
What the village has approved is a fence set back from the line, a front garden, new brickwork and a screen of planting that will take a few seasons to fill in. The privacy the internet expected from a wall will come from shrubs instead, and those shrubs will grow taller than the fence.
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Cover photograph via Eonline.
