America’s founding father, George Washington, cherished his farm at Mount Vernon, which dates back to the mid-1700s.
It was grand then, but now, the River View estate located on part of the property encompasses the grandiosity of Washington’s history combined with all the modern day conveniences today’s buyer can dream up. At an asking price of $60 million, it’s also Alexandria, Virginia’s most expensive residential listing ever.
“Nothing has sold for more than this in the Northern Virginia area,” listing agent Heather Corey of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty told Inman. “The highest thing that has sold was I think for $45 million in McClean, Virginia … that was a couple years ago.”
The 16,000-square-foot property, which sits on 16.5 acres of Mount Vernon, was “fully reconstituted, rebuilt and modernized” in 2018, but preserves the American Federal style. It was designed by architect Jim Rill and constructed by West Wing Builders.
The original home that was on the property was deeded to Washington’s personal secretary, Tobias Lear, who was married to Martha Washington’s niece.
“There was a house [on the property] from around when Washington was alive because he had deeded the property to his personal secretary,” Corey said. “[But] that was long gone. [A] house was built there around 1915-1920 … and then these owners wanted to restore that house from 1920, but it was in too far disrepair, so they had to tear it down and build from scratch. Now, they were able to restore a carriage house from about 1915 and then also restore a guest house from the 1920s.”
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With numerous state-of-the-art amenities and ample space both inside and out, the seven-bedroom, seven-full-bath and six-half-bath property would be an enviable location for any buyer from which to shelter-in-place.
“Sixteen-and-a-half acres 10 miles from Washington, D.C., on the water, is a rarity,” Corey said. “And to have an estate like this, you’d have to drive at least an hour out of D.C. to have an estate like this.”
Most rooms in the house feature terraces with water views of the Potomac River, and the property includes plush amenities like a home gym with radius windows, a spa area that features an indoor resistance pool and sauna, a gaming room with a full bar and hand-crafted stone walls, and a 15-seat movie theater.
Modern technological upgrades to the home include geothermal heating, 150-kilowatt full-property back-up generators, security systems, utilities, information and entertainment systems, all of which are controlled by a central bank of computers.
The estate also features a three-bedroom, three-bath, 2,600-square-foot guest house, a reconstituted carriage house that houses four cars and a studio apartment and a waterfront dock. In a nod to its history, the property also includes reproductions of English Colonial boxwood and rose gardens, designed based on old blueprints found on the property.