Inside Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island beach house — and her song inspired by it

Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island beach house has been part of her real estate portfolio since 2013 and a summer destination for the pop star and her inner circle for years.

The 11,000-square-foot waterfront mansion sits on Watch Hill, an affluent neighborhood in Westerly, Rhode Island, and reportedly includes seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and sprawling views of the Atlantic Ocean. Swift has welcomed to her home some of the biggest names in entertainment, including pals Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, and most recently boyfriend Travis Kelce.

Here’s what to know about the mansion.

Swift reportedly bought her Rhode Island home for $17M and paid in cash

The Providence Journal reported in 2016 that Swift paid $17.75 million in cash for the home in 2013. The mansion has 20 rooms and is on Bluff Avenue, the outlet reported.

The Rhode Island home is Swift’s spot for her Fourth of July parties

Swift had hosted a party each summer celebrating July Fourth and included many of her celebrity friends in what the public had once dubbed her “squad.”

The bash in 2016 was among the most star-studded; Karlie Kloss, Blake Lively, Gigi Hadid, Cara Delevingne, Ruby Rose, Uzo Aduba and Tom Hiddleston (who famously wore the I <3 TS shirt) were all there. Ed Sheeran, Lena Dunham, Emma Stone, Joe Jonas and her longtime friend from childhood, Abigail Anderson, have attended over the years, according to Us Weekly.

The annual parties took place in the few years after Swift bought the house, but she didn’t appear to host them between 2017 and 2022. In 2023, the party came back, though. Swift posted pics from the gathering with Selena Gomez and the Haim sisters, Danielle, Alana and Este.

The party apparently took another break this year while Swift brought her “Eras Tour” to Europe. She had a string of shows in Amsterdam over July Fourth.

Neighbors say Swift’s Rhode Island house is ‘hidden’ and like a ‘fortress’

The Providence Journal in 2016 interviewed some locals about living or working near Swift’s home.

Resident Marion Markham told the outlet that the mansion “is like a fortress” when Swift comes to town, thanks to her security team.

Resident Andrea Herring added that the community itself has a form of built in security with foliage.

“Watch Hill always was and always will be a very quiet, private community,” Herring told the outlet. “You have, like, one second between the trees and the bushes” to actually see houses tucked away.

Swift wrote about the history of her Rhode Island home in a song

“I had been waiting to write a song about Rebekah Harkness since 2013 probably,” Swift says in her documentary “Folklore: Long Pond Studio Sessions.” And with “The Last Great American Dynasty,” she finally did.

The track — off her album “Folklore” that she released during the pandemic — is initially about Harkness, a New York City socialite in the 1950s who owned the Rhode Island mansion before she died in 1982.

Harkness had a reputation in Watch Hill, as Swift lays out. She was divorced when she married Standard Oil heir William Harkness in the 1940s. (“How did a middle class divorcée do it?” the gossipers in Swift’s song wonder.) They bought the house in Rhode Island and called it “Holiday House.” He died of a heart attack seven years after they married, but Rebekah kept the compound and renovated it, according to this New York Times story from 1988. She hosted parties to rival Gatsby’s. As Swift writes, “Filled the pool with Champagne and swam with the big names/ And blew through the money on the boys and the ballet.”

The townsfolk didn’t love this and became outraged — and here spins a story that runs quite parallel to Swift’s after she bought the house. As New York magazine lays out in this 2020 article, Swift’s neighbors were mad about the flocking fans, about her desire to build a beachside wall, about a proposed new tax on second homes worth more than $1 million. Holiday House was, and may still be, a spectacle.

“This song is such a ‘Folklore’ moment to me because it’s not about you, but it’s all about you,” her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff tells Swift in the “Long Pond” doc.

The chorus of the song has the lines, “Who knows, if she never showed up, what could’ve been/ There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen/ She had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

These lines change slightly by the end: “Who knows, if I never showed up, what could’ve been/ There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen/ I had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com