This gorgeous tudoresque home doesn’t have a cute name but sits on a 42 acre estate just outside Sherman, Connecticut. It was built in 1916 and extensively remodeled in 2018 by the architectural firm of Di Biase Filkoff. The owners raise prize-winning English Springer Spaniels at a nearby kennel. It is a private home and not open to the public although if you’re in a market for an expensive dog you can probably get close.
Maywood is a 50 acre estate outside Bridgewater, Connecticut in Litchfield County. The Georgian/neo-classical style home on the property was designed by the firm of Ferguson and Shamamian and completed in 2000 and is owned by Peter and Leni May. Peter has degrees from the University of Chicago and is a private equity investor along with partner, Nelson Peltz. Their firm, Triarc, has either had major share holdings in or been involved in restructurings of Snapple, Wendy’s, Pepsi Co., Family Dollar and several other major corporations. Maywood is also a working organic farm producing eggs, wines, produce, honey and maple syrup which can be bought at the Bridgewater Village Store. The house and gardens are not open to the public although the gardens are opened up one day per year with the proceeds benefitting the Garden Conservancy. For more information about Maywood, click here. A YouTube video showing the beautiful grounds can be viewed here.
This house and its surrounding gardens is known as Twin Maples. The house was built in 1996 and is situated on a 325 acre estate near Salisbury, Connecticut. It is the creation of a couple who were active in the arts in New York and Boston.
Twin Maples was originally part of a 1740 land grant by King George II of England to the Selleck family and, incredibly, the property has only been sold twice since then. The Sellecks hung on to it for over two hundred years. The name Twin Maples refers to two maple trees that grew at the site of a former house on the property. The Georgian style house was designed by New York architect David Easton who also designed Albemarle House near Charlottesville (click here for more on the infamous Albemarle House).
The house is gorgeous but it is the gardens at Twin Maples that really set this property apart. They include a formal garden next to the house which transitions to woodland gardens and a wildflower meadow. There is even a winter garden inside the house itself. The gardens are the work of landscape architect Rodney Robinson and plantswoman Deborah Munson. Successfully cultivating a wildflower meadow is one of the most difficult things to pull off in gardening but this meadow, designed by Larry Weaner, along with the other gardens has won multiple awards. The entire garden ensemble has also been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution.
Twin Maples is still a private home and is not open to the public although the gardens are occasionally included on local garden tours. A few miles to the north is another significant country estate, the Scoville Estate covered in this blog here.
This beautiful French Norman farmhouse-style country house is the Scoville Estate. It is located in Taconic near Salisbury, Connecticut in the Litchfield Hills. The house is 12,400 square feet and sits on a 100 acre estate with fine views of the surrounding hills. Meryl Streep is a next door neighbor. It is not the largest, most expensive or plushest country estate in North America but IMO is one of the coolest.
The Scoville family has a history around Taconic going back to the 19th century when a local farmer named Samuel Scoville began mining high quality iron ore on his property. His sons, Jonathan and Nathaniel, moved to Buffalo, NY and expanded the business and the family fortune by manufacturing iron railroad car wheels. Nathaniel had two sons, Robert and Herbert, who moved back to Taconic with their mother, bought more land to add to the family estate and constructed a manor house in 1894. This house burned in 1915 but several structures associated with the house such as the carriage house and a power mill remain to this day. These structures have, in turn, been converted into residences.
Herbert Scoville and his wife, Orlena, constructed the French Norman house situated to the west of the original manor house in 1927. It was designed by Joseph Leland of Boston. Orlena lived until 1967 and the house was, at some point, taken over by her son, Herbert Jr. and his wife, Ann. Herbert Jr. was a trained scientist who worked at the CIA for many years and then the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was a tireless proponent of nuclear disarmament and dedicated the latter part of his life to this cause. His wife, Ann, was a noted sculptor and many of her pieces decorated the grounds of their Connecticut estate (which they usually referred to as the “Hill House”).
Herbert Jr. died in 1985 and after Ann passed away in 2014, the heirs made the decision to sell the estate and it sold for $5.8 million in 2017. Thus ended over 150 years of family ownership. The new owners are a couple that are associated with an investment firm focusing on sustainable technologies in the energy, water and waste management areas. Scoville Estate continues to serve as a private home and is not open to the public.
Just outside the nearby town of Salisbury is another country estate covered in this blog, Twin Maples – click here.
North American Country Estates 