Founding Fatherland: Portion of Washington’s original estate sells for $50M

The privately owned waterfront property features 7-bedrooms mansion on 16.5 acres

The seven-bedroom mansion sits on land once owned by George Washington. (Gordon Beall/TTR Sotheby's International Realty)
The seven-bedroom mansion sits on land once owned by George Washington. (Gordon Beall/TTR Sotheby's International Realty)

 

That’s a lot of Washingtons.

A portion of George Washington’s original Mount Vernon estate broke a D.C.-region record last week when it sold for $50 million.

Featuring a 16,000-square-foot mansion with a dock and 400 feet of frontage on the Potomac River plus a guest house, Mansion Global reports that the 16.5-acre property’s sale was the priciest residential transaction ever recorded across Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

The privately owned parcel was part of the original 1,800 acres the Father of our Country purchased in 1760 for £1,210, according to the American Horticultural Society, which also owns a portion of the original property. It remained in Washington’s family until 1859 and has since changed hands four times, the Wall Street Journal reported. Washington died in 1797.

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The bright white American Federal-style mansion on the property was built in 2014 and features amenities unheard of in Washington’s time, including 13 bathrooms and a fitness center with an indoor pool and spa. Gardens on the grounds have been redone based on blueprints found on the property which demanded traditional English boxwood hedges and pergolas.

More Revolutionary-era comforts include seven bedrooms, several terraces, a game room with a bar, and, appropriately, a wood-paneled library. Most rooms have water views, according to the Mansion Global report.

The property was originally listed back in September of 2020 for $60 million. Property records show the home was purchased in 2014 by Robert Stevens, the former chairman and chief executive of Lockheed Martin, and his wife, Michele, for $18.6 million. Previous to them, it was owned by Gerald Halpin, the developer of Tysons Corner, a shopping ae in Tysons, Virginia.

The new owner has not been identified, as a record of the sale is not yet public, according to Mansion Global.

[Mansion Global] — Vince DiMiceli