R.I. Firm Trying to Beat Record, Get $5.9 Million for House

A real estate firm that set a city record last year by selling a mansion for $4.1 million is trying to beat its own mark with an asking price of $5.9 million for a villa along Millionaires’ Row.

“Right now, the market is pretty good at the high end,” Spencer Potter, a broker for the Boston-based firm LandVest, said today.

The firm is trying to sell Fairholme, a Tudor-style villa next to railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt’s former summer “cottage,” The Breakers.

Fairholme was once owned by the sister of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and former President John F. Kennedy visited occasionally to swim in the heated pool when his back gave him trouble, Potter said. The mansion is now owned by John and Chandler Maschek Jr. of Palm Beach, Fla.

Last year, LandVest set a city record by selling Clarendon Court, which is where socialite Martha (Sunny)von Bulow slipped into a coma that her husband, Claus, was later acquitted of causing.