Chip Chop, the longtime Martha’s Vineyard home of veteran news anchor Diane Sawyer, is coming on the market for $24 million.

Sawyer and her husband, the late film director Mike Nichols, bought the roughly 20-acre beachfront estate in 1995 for $5.3 million, according to the listing agent, Mark Jenkins of Wallace & Co. Sotheby’s International Realty. Located between Vineyard Sound and Lake Tashmoo, the property has multiple houses, a swimming pool, a tennis court and two lengthy stretches of private beach.

One of the most prestigious estates in the area, Chip Chop dates to the late 1930s, when it was designed for the legendary stage actress Katharine Cornell, Jenkins said.

Sawyer and Nichols were married on the Vineyard, and purchased Chip Chop a few years later. Nichols had previously visited the property when it was owned by Cornell.

“Mike fell in love with the Vineyard in the ‘60s and always remembered the day he visited Katharine Cornell at her home,” Sawyer said in a statement. “He said it was the most beautiful house he’d ever seen and described the lustrous wood of the great room with its huge sliding doors. He remembered the path winding out over the dune to the beach, like an invitation to a perfect day. It always kept its hold on his imagination.”

The shingled New England-style main house, which has three bedrooms across nearly 5,000 square feet, is distinctive for its 10 chimneys. It was designed by the Neoclassical architect Eric Gugler, who remodeled the West Wing of the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Other buildings include a two-bedroom caretaker’s cottage and two modern beach cottages, which are fondly known as The Shacks because of the fishing shacks they replaced, Jenkins said. There are also two detached bedroom suites known as the Pond Pavilion and the Ocean Pavilion, which are used for guests.

Construction began on the estate in the late 1930s but stalled because of World War II, Jenkins said. The main house was eventually finished around 1945. Cornell, known for dramatic roles in stage tragedies, lived a mostly low-key life when she was on the Vineyard, according to the 2006 book “Vineyard Confidential: 350 Years of Scandals, Eccentrics, & Strange Occurrences.”

“Every day she paddled a canoe into town,” the book said. “She would come ashore, collect her mail and sit on the curbstone to read it.” On weekends, however, she entertained the likes of Noël Coward, Sir Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and James Cagney, the book said. “Many of Ms. Cornell’s weekend guests loved to skinny-dip in her pool. To enhance their privacy, the actress had the windows removed from the kitchen to keep the staff from stealing a peak at…Sir Laurence’s bare buttocks.”

After Sawyer and Nichols bought the property, Nichols spearheaded a renovation, Jenkins said. That involved creating replica antique windows and doors, some of which required hand carving, according to the website of Tate Builders, which oversaw the project. New dormers and additions were added.

“It feels like it was just done,” Jenkins said of the restoration. “You literally feel like Gregory Peck is going to stroll across the grass in his whites and say, ‘Anyone for tennis?’”

Sawyer recounted her favorite memories of the property over the past roughly three decades.

“Five grandchildren have run through the halls, learned to swim in the warm waters, gathered moss in the forest,” she said. “At Thanksgiving, both enormous fireplaces in the great room give off warmth and golden light. We have always felt so lucky to be together in this magic place.”

She said she is selling the property because “the rhythms of summer have changed” as her family has grown, and “there is less free time for long visits to the island.”

Sawyer has anchored news programs such as ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America and 20/20. Nichols, who was known for movies such as “The Graduate” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” died in 2014.

The Lake Tashmoo area is popular for kayaking, boating and clamming, and has drawn boldface names such as Mia Farrow and Kenneth Cole, Jenkins said, but it is not as well known as enclaves such as Edgartown or Chilmark.

The luxury Martha’s Vineyard market, like many around the country, has cooled since its Covid-induced peaks in 2021 and 2022, according to Jenkins, though he said there is still demand for “statement” properties like this one.