Yoko Ono moves from NYC apartment of 50 years to rural farm bought with John Lennon
By Bryan Ke
Japanese singer and activist Yoko Ono has permanently moved to a farm in upstate rural New York that she and her late husband, John Lennon, bought in the late ‘70s.
Ono, who turned 90 years old on Feb. 18, left her seventh-floor, nine-room Upper West Side apartment on West 72nd St. in Manhattan, signaling a change of pace for the artist after she stepped away from the spotlight due to an undisclosed illness that required “round the clock” medical care, according to the Daily Mail.
Whie it is unclear when the decision was made, the Daily Mail noted in its exclusive report that Ono moved to the property during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The singer had lived in Manhattan’s Dakota building, considered New York’s first luxury apartment building, for 50 years. Her late husband was assassinated in the building’s archway on Dec. 8, 1980, by Mark David Chapman, who remains behind bars to this day. Ono never remarried following her husband’s murder.
The farm reportedly spans 600 acres was purchased by her and her late husband in 1978 for $178,000.
The celebrity couple reportedly bought the farmland, which also included a herd of 122 cows and 10 bulls at one point, as a retreat and to raise Holstein dairy cows.
The main house on the farmland has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Ono, who is wheelchair-bound, also grows her own vegetables outside her home, where she lives a “peaceful life” out of the public eye in a town with a population of 340 people, sources told the New York Post.
Although her specific illness has not been revealed to the public, Ono reportedly remarked at an event in 2017: “I have learned so much from having this illness.”
The farm became a hot topic for Ono after the state of New York held a meeting to discuss hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, in the rural parts of the state in 2013.
The news ignited protest among residents of the state, including Ono, who organized Artists Against Fracking along with her son, Sean Lennon. The group eventually attracted the attention of celebrities who later joined the cause, such as Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Alec Baldwin and Robert DeNiro.
Ono’s farm is reportedly located on top of the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that geologists estimate to contain trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.
Although the protest had pushed Andrew Cuomo, who was serving as New York’s governor at the time, to delay his decision, the former governor eventually announced a ban on fracking in the state in 2014.
Ono celebrated her 90th birthday at her farm property on Feb. 18 with close friends and family, including long-time friend and publicist Elliot Mintz, her son and her son’s girlfriend, Charlotte Kemp Muhl.
“I had the honor of sharing Yoko Ono’s 90th birthday. I have known and loved Yoko for more than 50 years, in fact I’ve known nobody longer and never will,” Mintz reportedly wrote in the description of a now-deleted Instagram post.
“The room was filled with flowers, laughter, music, great food and loving exchanges. The first think [sic] I said to Yoko was ‘Happy birthday.’ The first thing she said to me was that I looked younger.”
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