One of the most beautiful houses in Baltimore is for sale and if I had a spare $5 million that I needed to blow, I’d snap it up in a heartbeat!
The house is called Tyrconnell and was built first in 1826 and then rebuilt in 1924. The house has nine full bathrooms, ten bedrooms and eleven fireplaces.
It also has the most beautiful and elegant detailing throughout it. The millwork is amazing and you can tell that the craftsmanship dates from the early 1900’s.
The house is filled with light, which is one of my main priorities.
I think that when you have this kind of kitchen, you should also have a scullery maid. I wish my copper pots and pans were this shiny, but since I actually use them, they aren’t.
It’s interesting that the kitchen isn’t super modern. 
Painted or papered?
Again, if I had that much shelving, every inch would be filled!
This house is known for its formal gardens, and you can see how beautiful it will be in the spring… Here’s what a House & Garden Pilgrimage had to say about the gardens:
Tyrconnell has 26 acres of gardens, landscaped in the 1920s by the noted Philadelphia landscape architect, Arthur Folsom Paul, are set amongst flowering specimens and mature native trees. A boxwood bordered entrance court, a patio with a west vista overlooking Lake Roland, and a terraced parterre garden surround the house. The noted north allee, modeled on the Italian Renaissance garden at Villa d’Este, features a magnificent central axis intersected by terraces and culminating in an exuberant fountain. The house, built in 1826 for John O’Donnell, was expanded in 1919 by the Baltimore firm of Mottu and White in the Colonial Revival style and is now listed on the National Register.
![image[31]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO4x2MNx_YORUZ75Ko_tD1yxqvFeLxcgJgYB-AhGBgKCoi36W-Hiskam9eb78fiiFqzqkYgC1tGDodePM7nXz3mhGUx32irtPI-uD-p0k51W3IIDFiJn4Uw_D6evmgE99-_5vzqw44tKU/s1600-h/image%25255B31%25255D%25255B4%25255D.png "image[31]")
The house even has a view down to the local lake.
If you didn’t know you were in Baltimore, you could be on a gorgeous English estate.
The property, which is more than 20 acres, comes with barns and other outbuildings, as well as a tenant's cottage.
Yep! I’d take this estate! Would you?
Check out the listing here.
Oh what a gem! Those gardens! I think you are right about the ladder in the kitchen. That dark bar running across the cabinets has something to do with the ladder, but why is it on the opposite wall?
ReplyDeleteI am wondering if the rail goes all the way round the room, because it even looks like it's over the windows.
DeleteIt was all very nice but what clinched the deal for me was the water!!! I would build a pool and then I wouldn't have to ever leave!
ReplyDeleteI think the ladder was a staging thing gone wrong Meg!
I have a suspicion that there's a pool there.
DeleteThe kitchen appears very functional. Super modern super expensive =no money left over for food to cook Ha. Any way would not one have large parties catered In that house- I would. Oh course the events would be to benefit a charity thus much donated and paid for by others and the house would shine as a lovely venue. Is this not how the other half lives?.... I know, a fun village festival on the grounds to entertain the country folk.
ReplyDeleteI saw pix of a charity party there.
DeleteThere are black hooks, it appears, on the white ladder in the pantry, to allow it to hook over the rod between the two tiers of upper cabinets. In the library, there is also a rod for the ladder, but it appears that the end of that ladder might be shaped to hook over the rod.
ReplyDeleteFor my own projects, I have often used a Putnam Rolling Ladder. If you are not familiar with this product, you might find it interesting.
I think I like a rolling ladder better, too.
Deleteamazing and $5 million is a DEAL -it would be 4-5x that here in DC only 40 miles away.
ReplyDeleteI know!!!
DeleteIt would be worth at least 5x that here in California. Possibly 10x:).
ReplyDeleteAmazing, isn't it?
DeleteThis is a magnificent house! And if all the stars were aligned... and I didn't have a financial care in the world....and a staff to keep things beautiful...I might take it! I believe I'm being true to myself when I say the one house I think about from time to time is a small Cape Cod in Millburn, NJ. It's first floor was designed like an urban loft...one wonderful space for every waking activity; bedrooms on the second floor. There was a small, but beautiful, restful garden out back with harmonious water features. Sometimes, less really is more! Angela Muller
ReplyDeleteI can't even imagine what the cost would be to maintain the property!
DeleteThis epitomizes my dream home. And considering what $5 million buys in some parts of the country it seems like a bargain. I wonder though what a realistic annual maintenance budget would be (even without the scullery maid.)
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the number of staff is that you'd have to have to maintain this house and property!
DeleteThis is, in fact, my dream house. But I'm afraid the asking price is just the entry ticket . . . I imagine the taxes are astronomical, and the maintenance costs are crushing. I figure -- conservatively -- the out of pocket annual maintenance costs for keeping the place up to snuff would be a minimum of $250,000-$350,000. It takes a lot of care to keep a place as manicured as this property is! Then there is the staff. Minimum of two live ins required just to keep the house dusted and cared for, make the beds, along with do the cooking. Extras brought in for heavy cleaning and seasonal changeouts. Oh, and by the way, the reason that kitchen looks a bit dated and old fashioned is that owners of houses of this size and calibre are not the ones doing the cooking in it, at least not more than adding a pinch of this or that to the sauce befoe it is served. It is actually a well equipped and very pleasant kitchen as these things go. Then there is the outside staff. At minimum a full time live in caretaker with a full time gardener year around, and two or three workers brought in on staff seasonally spring through autumn for clean up, planting, weeding, mowing, etc. Then there are all the other ancillary serice providers to consider, such as arborists to attend to the trees, painters, plumbers, electricians, the list goes on and on, and on and on. So, my guess as to the all in cost to maintain and staff this gorgeous house likely comes in at (least) a cool million a year. And all that assumes that the interiors have been fully furnished and decorated by the new owners. Excuse me -- I understand that Bunny Williams is on the line, returning my call . . .
ReplyDeleteEgads, it is as if one needs to publish a magazine and then bill the magazine for maintaining the residences of the "editor" namesake as stipulated in the contract. As per fees to rent the houses for photo shoots too. Yep, that's the ticket.
DeleteWhich blonde lifestyle goddess might you be referring to, I wonder?
DeleteAmazing. It seems the land alone would carry that price tag. I was going to buy it but thanks to Reggie I was quickly snapped back to reality.
ReplyDeleteStumbled across this collection of photos of the place taken in the 1930s:
ReplyDeleteLibrary of Congress link
The original builder of the original property was John O'Donnell (1796-1870), son of John O'Donnell, the Irish adventurer who settled in what he called Canton in 1785, east of Baltimore. They are my wife's 3rd and 4th great granduncles. The last O'Donnell to have lived at "Tyrconnell" was Louis O'Donnell (1875- ?). His wife, Agnes Kennedy Jackson, was the secretary of the "Hardy Garden Club Of Ruxton".
ReplyDelete"Tyrconnell", or "Donegal" is a name given to the property based on the assumption that this branch of the O'Donnell family, with John O'Donnell of Canton being the American progenitor, finds its origins in Donegal, Ireland, and descent from Red Hugh O'Donnell. This assumption is based on the research of Charles Routledge O'Donnell, cousin to John O'Donnell, the original builder of this property. The research of Charles Routlegde O'Donnell however is considered to be compromised by wishful thinking rather than genealogical facts. The O'Donnell's from Baltimore never claimed any ties with the Donegal O'Donnell's until after Charles Routledge published his genealogical research in or around 1850 in Ireland. After this its truth-worthiness has simply been assumed, also by Thornton-Cook, who published "John O'Donnell of Baltimore, his forebears and descendants".
This property represents an exponent of the history of a Baltimore family, the O'Donnell's, of which there is very little known, even in Baltimore itself. My own research of this family, now spanning almost 4 years, takes me back not any further than 1742, placing the roots of the Baltimore O'Donnell's in Trough, a small parish just north of Limerick, where a John O'Donnell (yes, yet another John, the father of John of Canton) inherits lands and property through marriage of his father James to Christiana Stritch. Until this inheritance of Trough took effect, the family was based in Limerick, Ireland, with properties in Loghill, west of Limerick at the banks of the river Shannon.
Thought this little bit of history would interest you.