Pinehurst, North Carolina
Garran Hill
200 Hollycrest Drive
$4,250,000
Built in 1916 for Walter Hines Page, United States Ambassador to the Court of St James's, by the same craftsmen who built Pinehurst. 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, 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.
French doors open the south wall to the terrace. In the late afternoon the light crosses the original oak floor and stays through dinner, the way it has since 1916.
Down the hall, a sitting room keeps a Delft tile fireplace and a spiral staircase, two stories told quietly in one room.
Two lighted regulation tennis courts under the longleaf pines, ready for new surfaces and new rivalries. A camellia garden. A boxwood herb garden. And the Wee Cottage, a playhouse with its own address in family memory.
Walter Hines Page, who built it from London and never spent a night here. Betty Dumaine, whose oldest friendship became the Princess Mother of Thailand. The 1999 restoration, recorded in fifteen architectural drawings. Every claim cited.
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The drive curves so the house arrives slowly. That was the idea in 1916, and nobody has improved on it.
Inside the door, the hall runs straight through to the garden. The house shows you its whole depth before you have taken three steps.
Seven mantels were carved for this house. They made the rooms bigger so they could dance.
Some rooms are for the party. These are for the morning after, coffee, a book, no one home yet.
The primary wing sits on the first floor, its own quiet country. The stairs are for guests.
The pool and the courts exist because the land was nearly divided once. The family built reasons to stay instead.
A horse named Blue Fox is buried by the garden wall. Houses that are loved keep their dead close.
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.