A Florida home that once belonged to the literal "Real McCoy" is now on the market.
Located at 1090 Riverside Dr. in Holly Hill, the historic home was built in 1897 and was famously owned by legendary bootlegger William "Bill" McCoy, also known as the "King of Rum Row," who moved to the area in 1900.
According to the listing, the 3,115-square-foot home comes with five bedrooms and four bathrooms, as well as the original hardwood floors, a solar-heated pool, two wrap-around porches, and more.
At first, Capt. McCoy, and his brother Ben, operated a successful shipping business in Holly Hill moving freight and passengers up and down the Halifax River, as well as building luxury yachts for famous American industry tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt III and Andrew Carnegie, reports PBS.
However, after Prohibition and the completion of new highways in Florida, the business took a major hit, and so the two brothers then resorted to rum running.
Over the next few years, Bill McCoy became one of the country's most wanted men (by both the U.S. Government and organized crime families) for selling vast amounts of high quality booze along the East Coast.
Often using multiple schooners at a time, his method involved anchoring exactly three miles offshore, enabling McCoy to operate "legal" floating liquor stores in international waters.
After his arrest by the U.S. Government in 1923, McCoy pled guilty to avoid a long trial, which resulted in him serving a nine-month sentence in a New Jersey jail.
He then spent his remaining years in Florida, where he continued his boat building business until he died of a heart attack in 1948.
But of course his name still lives on. Besides having a permanent exhibit at the Halifax Museum in Daytona Beach and being immortalized on the hit HBO show "Boardwalk Empire," his success and reputation for running undiluted whiskey is believed by some to be the origin of the common idiom and metaphor "The Real McCoy."
The current asking price for this piece of McCoy history is $895,000, and the listing agent is Susie Gordon of Adams, Cameron & Co., Realtors.
