Pinehurst, North Carolina
Garran Hill
Some houses hold history. This one shaped it.
200 Hollycrest Drive
$4,250,000
Built in 1916 for Walter Hines Page, United States Ambassador to the Court of St James's. Rare handmade red brick laid in Flemish bond above a classic water table. Held by a line of stewards for more than a century, restored to the studs from 1999 to 2001 by the architect Thomas O'Shea, and kept.
The 1916 fabric remains. Seven carved mantels. Restored original oak floors. Leaded sidelights and arched fanlights above six panel solid wood doors. Original brass key plates, still turning.
Past the portico, the door opens to a two-story entry where a Colonial Revival staircase climbs and the oak handrail runs unbroken from volute to landing. Built by Leonard Tufts' own craftsmen, the same men who were building Pinehurst two miles away, by hands that meant for you to see the whole depth of the house before you have taken three steps.
Four columns. Full entablature. Drawn to exact Georgian proportion and built that way. The leaded glass sidelights and the fanlight at the front entry are original to 1916, not reproductions. Three months were spent sourcing period accurate brick for the portico. The proportions are correct because the drawings survived.
Nearly forty feet, and it carries two full sitting areas without crowding either one. A Federal mantel over dark marble anchors it, the ceiling worked in panels and coffers, bookcases arched into the wall. French doors open the whole south side to the brick terrace. In the afternoon the light crosses the oak and stays, the way it has since 1916.
Heart pine underfoot, reclaimed, the one floor in the house that is not the original oak, and the warmth tells you why. White Shaker cabinetry, glass fronts, black granite, a professional range under its hood. A butler's pantry with a farm sink and a butcher block counter does the work the dinner party never sees. The breakfast room sits in chinoiserie toile and opens to the grounds, so the day starts with the door already open.
The library takes three walls floor to ceiling, the kind of room you stop calling a feature and start calling a reason. Down the hall the sitting room keeps a Delft tile fireplace and a spiral stair that climbs to the second floor office, two stories told quietly in one room.
It takes the full depth of the house. A fireplace, paneled wainscoting, oak floors that were here first. Two dressing rooms, because two people lived here and neither had to wait. The bath looks straight into the garden, and the French doors mean the morning can be private before it is anything else.
The pool and the courts exist because the land was nearly divided once. The family built reasons to stay instead. A saltwater pool, twenty by forty, inside a brick walled garden the wall built first. Two lighted tennis courts under the longleaf pines, ready for new surfaces. A boxwood herb garden. And the Wee Cottage, a playhouse with its own address in family memory.
Walter Hines Page, who commissioned it from London and sent his son Ralph to build it. Betty Dumaine, whose years at Hollycrest brought horses, hounds, and an oldest friendship that reached the Thai royal court. The 1999 restoration, recorded in fifteen architectural drawings. Every claim cited.
Read the full history →The whole house and grounds, in full. Move through by hand, or by room.
The estate was once nearly a thousand acres. A neighborhood rose around it and took the name. What remains is the house, the gardens, the courts, the pool. The last piece of Garran Hill on its own ground.