Martha Stewart Hamptons: The Polish Girl from Nutley Who Built an Empire on Perfection

Martha Kostyra was eight years old when her father handed her a yardstick. Not to measure anything. To garden with. In that moment, in the backyard of their modest three-bedroom house at 86 Elm Place in Nutley, New Jersey, Eddie Kostyra stood over his daughter like a drill sergeant. Mean. Demanding. Watching her dig in the dirt with the precision of someone who would accept nothing less than flawless.

“He stood over you like a sergeant,” Martha would later recall. “Mean. Mean. ‘You’re not doing it right.'” Naturally, her siblings dreaded those sessions. They got their “whoopings” with that yardstick when they failed to meet his standards. In fact, her brother Eric still despises gardening to this day. However, Martha was different. Unlike her siblings, she leaned in, listened carefully, and ultimately decided that if perfection was the price of love, she would pay it.

That little girl from a cramped New Jersey house would eventually own one of the most photographed homes on Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton. Along the way, she became America’s first self-made female billionaire. Ultimately, she spent decades teaching millions of strangers how to fold napkins, arrange flowers, and host dinner parties with surgical precision. All of it traces back to that backyard, to that yardstick, to that relentless demand for perfection.

Martha Stewart Hamptons: From a Second-Floor Walkup to Lily Pond Lane

The Martha Stewart Hamptons story begins in a place that couldn’t be further from oceanfront estates. She was born Martha Helen Kostyra on August 3, 1941, in Jersey City, in a tiny second-floor walkup at 33 Stagg Street. At the time, her father Edward worked at the shipyards, while her mother, also named Martha, taught elementary school. There was no porch and no room for a garden. In other words, barely enough space for a growing family that would eventually include six children.

When Martha was three, the Kostyras moved to Nutley, a working-class suburb where Polish-American families planted vegetables in their backyards because they had to, not because it was trendy. On one hand, her grandfather ran a butcher shop. On the other hand, her father, despite being educated, couldn’t escape a pharmaceutical salesman job he resented. As Martha would later describe him, “He was a failure in work.” Reportedly, he sometimes started the day with a large glass of coffee and red wine.

Yet Eddie Kostyra was something else entirely in that garden. He could grow anything, and he demanded that his children learn to do the same. Clearly, Martha was his favorite. “It was very obvious to everybody that I was his favorite,” she said. “He thought I was more like him than the other children.” As a result, she was trusted to iron his linen shirts. She watched him put on his Harris Tweed jacket and turquoise-blue tie, and she thought he was the handsomest father alive.

Meanwhile, she absorbed everything around her. From her mother, she learned cooking, sewing, and the domestic arts. Additionally, from neighbors who were retired bakers, she learned pies and cakes. Furthermore, from her grandparents in Buffalo, she learned canning and preservation. By the time she was ten, she was already babysitting for Mickey Mantle’s four sons and organizing their birthday parties. Consequently, domestic perfection wasn’t just a skill for young Martha. Instead, it was her way out.

The Wound That Built an Empire

Perfectionism was survival in the Kostyra household. Eddie demanded excellence and punished failure with the yardstick, the belt, and constant hovering over his children. In response, Martha became the ideal daughter, the one who wanted to learn, who listened, who got it right.

But there was a cost. When Martha came home from Barnard College to announce her engagement to Andrew Stewart, a Yale law student she had fallen in love with after one date, her father’s reaction was immediate and brutal. “My dad slapped me,” Martha revealed in her Netflix documentary. “He slapped me hard on my face and said, ‘No, you’re not marrying him. He’s a Jew.'”

Surprisingly, she wasn’t shocked by his reaction. “He was a bigot,” she said. “And he was impulsive.” Nevertheless, she married Andrew anyway. In 1961, her mother helped her sew her own wedding dress. The gown was beautiful and perfect, marking the beginning of a pattern that would define Martha’s life: creating gorgeous surfaces while managing chaos underneath.

Notably, the marriage lasted 29 years before ending in divorce. Andrew reportedly couldn’t handle being overshadowed by his wife’s growing empire. Martha, who had learned from her father that perfection was the only acceptable standard, was known to be demanding, critical, and sometimes cruel. The very traits that built her business also destroyed her most intimate relationship.

Building the Empire: From Stockbroker to Domestic Goddess

Before Martha Stewart taught America how to fold a fitted sheet, she was one of the few female stockbrokers on Wall Street. She got her license in 1968, and by all accounts, she was excellent at the job. Her former boss Andy Monness later described her as brilliant, analytical, and driven.

However, Wall Street wasn’t where Martha’s story would unfold. In 1971, she and Andrew bought a rundown 1805 farmhouse in Westport, Connecticut, for $46,750. The property, known as Turkey Hill, became her laboratory. Methodically, she restored every inch of it herself. Then she started a catering business from the kitchen.

A chance meeting at a book release party led to her first cookbook, “Entertaining,” published in 1982. It sold thousands of copies. Subsequently, more books followed, then a magazine, then television. By 1997, she had consolidated everything into Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, with herself as chairwoman, president, and CEO.

On October 19, 1999, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares opened at $18 and soared to $38 by day’s end. In that moment, Martha Stewart became the first self-made female billionaire in American history. Remarkably, the little girl from Nutley who had learned to garden under threat of a yardstick now controlled a media empire worth over a billion dollars.

The Fall and the Five Months That Changed Everything

In December 2001, Martha sold 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems stock, avoiding a loss of about $45,000 when the stock tanked the next day. Importantly, it wasn’t the trade that destroyed her. Rather, it was the cover-up, the lies to federal investigators, and the conspiracy to obstruct justice.

In March 2004, she was convicted of four felony counts. That July, a judge sentenced her to five months in federal prison, five months of home confinement, and a $30,000 fine. Predictably, many predicted it would end her empire.

Martha reported to Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia, nicknamed “Camp Cupcake,” on October 8, 2004. Later, she would describe the experience as “horrifying” due to the strip searches, the regimented meals, and the complete loss of control. “Those prosecutors should have been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high,” she said decades later.

Yet something unexpected happened during those five months. Surprisingly, her company’s stock actually rose during her incarceration. The public, it seemed, was rooting for her comeback. On March 4, 2005, Martha walked out of Alderson at 12:30 AM to fans chanting “Save Martha!” At that moment, she was wearing a hand-crocheted poncho made by a fellow inmate. “I will be back,” she told them. “I’m not afraid whatsoever.”

Martha Stewart East Hampton: The Wreck on the Nicest Street

After her divorce in 1990, Martha’s daughter Alexis gave her some pointed advice. “The place to go, Mother, as a single woman in the summertime, is the Hamptons.” So Martha went looking. And in typical Martha fashion, she asked the realtor a question that revealed everything about who she was.

“How about the wreck on the nicest street?”

In 1991, she found exactly that: an 1873 shingled cottage at 58 Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton, one of the most prestigious addresses in America. She paid $1.7 million for what she described as “the oldest house on the block and a total wreck.” Inside, there were about 25 tiny rooms, cracked plaster ceilings, and decades of neglect.

Transforming Lily Pond Lane

Naturally, Martha saw potential where others saw problems. She hired Ben Krupinski, who had polished the floors of that very house as a high school student, to oversee the renovation. Together, they replaced ceilings with beadboard, combined cramped rooms into gracious spaces, and installed a pool. For years, she painted the exterior trim teal to complement her rose garden. Later, when she moved the roses to Bedford and planted Japanese maples instead, she repainted everything biscuit to match.

Over time, the Martha Stewart Lily Pond Lane property became a living showcase of her brand. Hillary Clinton came over for cappuccino. Billy Joel, Lee Radziwill, and Mort Zuckerman attended her parties. Most memorably, her 50th birthday celebration there, with barbecue chicken from the Cutchogue Fire Department and blue margaritas from the Blue Parrot, became local legend.

Finally, in 2021, she sold the property for $16.5 million, nearly double the asking price. The buyer was Kenneth Lerer, co-founder of the Huffington Post. After 30 years, Martha was letting go of another piece of the empire she had built.

The Tell: Why the Hamptons Made Sense

Consider what Martha Stewart created at Lily Pond Lane. A meticulously restored historic home. Gardens that changed with her evolving vision. Every detail controlled, curated, perfect. Essentially, it was the opposite of 86 Elm Place in Nutley, where six children shared three bedrooms and her father’s anger filled every room.

The Hamptons house served as proof. It demonstrated that the girl from the cramped walkup had made it, that the daughter of a failed salesman could own property on the same street as media moguls and hedge fund billionaires, and that perfection, relentlessly pursued, could transform your entire life.

But it was also an extension of the wound. Martha still couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest, and couldn’t accept anything less than flawless. The same drive that earned her father’s love—and his yardstick—still animated every restored ceiling, every transplanted rosebush, every 73rd cookbook.

“I do what I please and I do it with ease,” she wrote in her high school yearbook. Similarly, a friend later described her as “more focused than a bullet in flight.” The woman who emerged from prison wearing an inmate’s poncho and immediately launched two television shows wasn’t merely surviving. Instead, she was proving.

Martha Stewart Net Worth: The Comeback That Defied Everything

Today, Martha Stewart’s net worth sits around $400 million. Admittedly, she’s no longer a billionaire—the scandal, the stock collapse, and the eventual sale of her company to Sequential Brands in 2015 for $353 million saw to that. Nevertheless, she remains one of the most successful businesswomen in American history.

More remarkably, she keeps reinventing herself. In 2008, Snoop Dogg appeared on her cooking show, and something unexpected happened. The gangster rapper and the domestic goddess discovered they had genuine chemistry. “What an odd couple we were,” Martha recalled. As Snoop later explained, “Martha kind of pioneered this as far as letting rappers become part of daytime television.”

Their friendship blossomed into “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party,” which premiered on VH1 in 2016. Impressively, the show earned 3 million viewers on debut and an Emmy nomination. Critics were charmed, and audiences couldn’t look away. Here was Martha Stewart, convicted felon and perfectionist icon, cooking fried chicken alongside a man who openly discussed his love of marijuana.

“She lets me do me and accepts me for who I am,” Snoop told People. “She doesn’t try to change me.” Perhaps Martha, who spent her childhood trying to be perfect enough to earn her father’s love, finally understood something about acceptance that she hadn’t always practiced herself.

The Sports Illustrated Cover at 81

In May 2023, Martha Stewart made history once again. At 81 years old, she appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, becoming the oldest model in the publication’s history.

“Usually I’m motivated by pay,” she said. “But this time I was motivated by showing people that a woman my age could still look good, feel good, be good.” During the shoot, she posed in ten different swimwear looks in the Dominican Republic. Beforehand, she didn’t starve herself, though she did skip bread and pasta for a couple of months. Additionally, she went to Pilates every other day.

“The whole aging thing is so boring,” she told the Today show. Clearly, the daughter of Eddie Kostyra, the woman who learned that perfection was survival, was still proving something at 81. Still showing the world what she could do.

Martha Stewart Hamptons Legacy: Still That Girl from Nutley

Martha Stewart turned 83 in August 2024. That fall, her Netflix documentary pulled back the curtain on decades of carefully managed image, revealing the father who hit her, the marriage that crumbled, and the prison sentence she still resents. Around the same time, she published her 100th cookbook. Even now, she continues to host shows, launch products, and make headlines.

She no longer owns property in the Hamptons, having sold Lily Pond Lane in 2021. However, her influence there remains immeasurable. She helped define what East Hampton style looked like for a generation, and she showed that domestic perfection could be both art form and billion-dollar business.

Today, she splits her time between her 153-acre farm in Bedford, New York, and Skylands, a 35,000-square-foot estate in Seal Harbor, Maine that once belonged to Edsel Ford. Notably, she counts 11 fireplaces at Skylands and lights them all for her grandchildren.

Think about the girl who learned to garden under threat of a yardstick. Consider the teenager modeling at Bonwit Teller to pay for college. Picture the woman who took the wreck on Lily Pond Lane and turned it into one of the most photographed homes in America. Somehow, she transformed every wound into fuel, every setback into a comeback, and every criticism into motivation.

At 83, she’s still doing it. Still proving something. Still that girl from Nutley who decided early that if perfection was what it took, she would deliver it. No matter what it cost.

And then she bought herself an empire.

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