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Purchase Your Slice of History- Historic Tower Hill House Near Cape Charles, Virginia Is For Sale

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

 

Front View Of Tower Hill House

As it  has since 1746,  this elegant 5500 sq. ft.  historic Virginia waterfront home, now for sale,  one of the finest on the Eastern Shore of Virginia since  it was built,  stands sentinel over  King’s Creek,  a broad saltwater inlet from the Chesapeake Bay just a few minutes east of Cape Charles, VA.   Remembering the roads of those early days, or rather lack of them,  it’s easy to see why the location of Tower Hill was so desirable.  When you stand on the rolling rear  lawn and look down the inlet,  you can actually see the Chesapeake Bay in the not-too-far distance.  Since travel by boat was one of the most common means of travel on the Eastern Shore in the 1700’s,   the fact that Tower Hill was on a deep channelled inlet with such a close connection to the Bay, ( which functioned as the interstate highway of  that day ) meant that its owners had exceptional access to shipping and receiving goods and  hosting important visitors.  This would have given them many financial advantages and increased social status.  Being in the Shore’s very southern tip was advantageous then as well because of  easy access to the Atlantic Ocean  and to commerce with the nearby Yorktown and Williamsburg,  which were already  important towns.  Then,  as now,  it was location, location, location and this  site’s superior physical attributes as well as its natural beauty  explain why the original owner invested what would  have then been a small fortune into the construction of this majestic brick manor home.     And Tower Hill still has a most superior location,  being less than ten minutes to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel connecting the Eastern Shore to Virginia Beach and Norfolk and only about five minutes to the beaches, golf  and other special amenities in  the historic town of Cape Charles.

Rear View Of Tower Hill and Grounds

Built of  brick in a blue tip  Flemish bond pattern,  the Tower Hill House  architecturally is  classic Georgian style with its attention to symmetry, balance and proportion.  Other period details include a chimney at either end of the home,  side-gabled roof,  paneled  front door with  pilasters, crown and  an overhead transom.   6-pane small dormer windows are inset on the top floor.   Fully restored in  2001,  Tower Hill House retains all the charm of a truly historic home but the 2001 restoration has  now outfitted this fine home with all of  today’s modern conveniences as well,  pretty much having your cake and eating it too.

Elegant Foyer With Raised Panel Wainscoting

The approach to Tower Hill House is most impressive– professionally landscaped, with a brown pebble circular driveway edged withcobblestones and lined with mature crepe myrtles and magnolia trees.  Walkways of  Tuscan red pavers and foundation plantings bridge  the space between the driveway and the 6 curved brick steps with gentle risers and black wrought iron hand rails. A deep landing brings you to the double leaf  front glass panel door with glass surrounds and an elaborate crown supported by detailed pilasters  opening  into the formal foyer with the kitchen and dining area accessed on  the left  through double French doors. The formal living room is accessed on the right also through double French doors.  It is the central foyer which first introduces one to the real beauty of this historic Eastern Shore home. Quite large,  with high ceilings,  raised panel wainscoting and elaborate moldings throughout, the foyer provides the first views of the water through double French doors leading to full  length rear porches overlooking the inlet, the dock  and on out to the Chesapeake Bay.  It is immediately apparent that this home was restored  with loving care, using fine materials and talented craftsmen. The  workmanship is outstanding.

Kitchen Fireplace Is A Focal Point

The charming kitchen with large dining area  features a 12 ft. ceiling and original brick  fireplace with a slate hearth. Floors are wide board pine, gleaming in the diffused natural light from the room’s many deep set windows.  As this home served as a B&B for several years,  the Vulcan stove with professional hood make whipping up a gourmet meal a snap.  Kitchen island with lots of storage space and new GE built-in appliances including refrigerator with custom panels to match the  extensive cabinetry.   This is a dream kitchen, great for entertaining,  with plenty of  room to add a love seat, stuffed chairs, etc. to complete it as a special  gathering place for owners and guests.   And speaking of guests, this home was the site of the 14th as well as the recent 15th annual Benefit  By The Bay and proved itself  twice over as a splendid place to hold a  party with over 300 in attendence !  (More on the Benefit in a future post.)

Elegant Formal Living Room

The gracious formal living room is especially notable with deep set, floor to ceiling windows which flood this lovely room with natural light, and,  since it is one room deep,  windows are on both the east and west side of the room.  Five piece crown moldings with dentil  woodwork,  fireplace with elaborate surround, 8 panel wooden doors with brass hardware add to the charm.  This is a very restful room with lovely views out to the water, and,  as the home has an east-west orientation,  is a great place to enjoy the spectacular sunsets over the water.  Smooth,  green  lawn  rolls gently down to the water,   dotted with mature shade trees including a huge oak which must be several hundred years old.   Colorful  landscaping all around this home is certainly part of its overall ambience .

Tower Hill offers 2 Master Suites

Upstairs,  the  2 master bedrooms each have French doors leading a  private balcony overlooking the water and  the impressive dock,  which will accommodate several boats.  With a total of 5 bedrooms  and 6 and a half  baths,  clearly there is plenty of room for personal guests or  to restore  the B&B usage.  Each bedroom features a fireplace with carved mantel and a slate or marble hearth,  4 piece crown moldings and  deep set windows with window seats.  Luxurious bathrooms abound, each with enclosed custom tile shower and claw footed tub.  On the 3rd floor there is a special window package which brings in  lots of light  including restful  natural light in the stairwell.

Room For Toys For Everyone

A Home For Your Boat

Downstairs in the finished full- house- length brick walled basement,  the large wine cellar has custom wrought iron gates, an extensive wine rack and large wine cooler.  Lots of ornate wrought iron throughout the entire area.  Another portion of the basement features a large “walk-in”  wood burning fireplace  and a bar area with a wood burning stove.  Plenty of room for pool table, card tables and other toys  including  a large screen  TV  — it’s a great “play” room,  for sure.  Includes open beams throughout the basement,  floors of brick or tile and a full bath located just off the wine celler area.  Like the rest of the house, the basement  is totally wired for music throughout.

Ready for some time at the beach ?  It’s  only about five minutes from Tower Hill house to the glistening sand beach in Cape Charles.  For golfers, the new signature Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus courses designed around shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay and Old Plantation Creek  provide challenging golf in a simply beautiful setting.  In fact, the # 3 hole on the Palmer course was voted the  “Number #  1 Golf  Hole in Virginia”  so it’s clearly  pretty special.  Plus 19th hole relaxation at the Coach House Tavern  is always a treat– it overlooks the driving range and practice putting green so you can watch your friends trying to improve their handicaps a point or two,  always fun.  All the other amenities of Cape Charles, from fine and casual dining to shops to theatre add so much to the lifestyle and pleasure of owning the Tower Hill house.   And without a doubt,  the Tower Hill house is one of the finest historic waterfront homes on the entire  Eastern Shore.  It offers history and elegance in a gracious waterfront setting,  close to so many special amenities.  For an appointment to see it for yourself,  call Blue Heron Realty Co., 757-678-5200.

                       

 

(Posted by Marlene Cree, licensed Virginia agent with Blue Heron Realty Co., 7134  Wilsonia Neck Dr., Machipongo, VA)

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The Kellogg House For Sale, My Children’s Home…Part 2

Monday, June 6th, 2011

The Kellogg House at 644 Monroe Ave., Cape Charles, VA

Arguably the finest house in the historic Chesapeake Bayfront town of  Cape Charles, Virginia , the Kellogg House at  644 Monroe Avenue, remains for my children their cherished residence,  full of childhood memories.  From elementary school-aged children to high schoolers,  this house was the center of their universe  for eleven years.  Having spent over 4,000 nights there,  I have a unique appreciation for its particular special history, qualities and features completely aside from the special amenities in Cape Charles such as the great town beach,  Palmer and Nicklaus world class golf courses and a new state-of-the-art marina.  And believe me, there hardly was a morning that I did not awaken with the feeling of how privileged I was to live in such a fine old home!

She never fails to impress a new visitor that crosses her threshold.  From the moment one stands

Grand Entrance Portico at the Kellogg House

 on the sidewalk out front gazing up at her parapets, this grand lady calls, welcoming one to climb the granite steps to the front portico supported by pairs of twin Doric columns.  A great big door with lionshead knocker guards the entrance that is lined with leaded glass-paned sidelights and fan light above.  Dropping the bar on the knocker sends a resounding clap echoing down the entrance hall and up the grand staircase.  My memory recalls the kids bounding down the stairs  to answer the door,  ready for friends and play.

Mr. Eucebius Milton Kellogg completed the construction of this magnificent house in 1928,  two years after sinking the massive foundation that supports the impressive  brick and steel structure of the home.  I understand that 6 months was spent on this foundation,  driving contiguous pilings deep into the footprint upon which the concrete footers were poured.  As the basement is at ground level,  mounds of earth were piled high up against the front walls,  giving the impression from the street the home is built on a  hill.  Mr. Kellogg was a railroad tycoon and wanted his final home to last for centuries! Walls three and four bricks thick stand upon the poured footers and threaded throughout each of the three floors of the home are 12″ steel I-beams. No big, bad wolf is going to blow this house away!

Massive masonry fireplace and French doors in living room

Great, big, formal spaces lend an air of elegance and are finished with architectural moldings, up to five pieces hand-fitted together.

In the center of the outer wall of the living room is a grand masonry fireplace with stone mantel and carved insert  in French script.  On either side of the massive fireplace,  a fireplace that warmed my cold feet on many winter nights, are big French doors offering easy access to the Spanish tiled Florida room.

This sun porch has these incredible horizontal stacking windows that open up great expanses of screened airflow. And on the other side of the great center hall is a wonderful dining room with a centerpiece

Dining room with mahogany china cupboard

 that is a beautiful, handcarved, solid mahogany china cupboard. For excellent service, right behind the dining room is the best butler pantry I have ever seen, with floor to ceiling wooden and glass cupboards and an original, five foot long  porcelain sink. The back hall has another fantastic gem that never fails to amaze,  a floor to ceiling Frigidaire ice cream cupboard,

Floor to ceiling ice cream cupboard in back hall

 magnificently refinished to attract the attention it deserves. Two sets of back stairs lead down to the basement and out into the back yard. The great kitchen also has the same type of stacking windows as the Florida room and allows for wonderful ventilation while preparing and cooking food. Between the kitchen and the dining room and just off the butler pantry is another little surprise, a charming, tiled breakfast room surrounded by six paned, double hung windows that bring the soft morning light and outdoors inside. And off the dining room is a cute, little tiled screened porch, one where I often slept on an army cot during hot summer nights.

Yes, the kids sounded like herds of elephants trampling up and down the grand, cantilevered staircase, a sound that took me years to get used to, but that I miss so much now that they are grown up and on their own. These wonderful stairs always amazed me by their seemingly weightless suspension, but how graceful they

Wonderfully engineered cantilevered grand staircase

are, appointed with a beautiful mahogany bannister with curled end at the bottom. At each of the three floors is an access door that opens to the laundry chute for conveniently making soiled, and in the case of lazy children, not so soiled clothes disappear down to the laundry room in the basement.

The suite of rooms on the second floor tell an interesting story about an elderly couple whose children had all left home before they designed and built this house. Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg had two daughters that they raised in the home at 653 Tazewell, just a hop, skip and a jump from the location of this, their new  Monroe Avenue mansion. There they lived for thirty-five years before moving into this home,  their final place of residence. Settled into their dream home in 1928, Mr. Kellogg occupied one half of the second floor in a large bedroom served by a built-in wardrobe with glass paned doors and a bathroom with shower finished with subway tile. This was heated by a radiator hidden behind a massive iron screen ornamented with two

Master bedroom with built-in wardrobe

 hundred flur-de-lis. The other half of this floor was occupied by Mrs. Kellogg, a suite of three rooms – one a corner bedroom with attached tiled bathroom with full sized tub and pedestal sink and same flur-de-lis radiator screen. The middle room was clearly her full sized dressing and sitting room and passing though that past a huge cedar closet is the sleeping porch for those hot summer nights before the age of air conditioning. And outside that is an outdoor patio as high

Sleeping porch at the Kellogg House

as the tops of the huge crepe myrtles in the back yard – a perfect place for sunbathing!

The third floor was clearly designated for two servants to live in, with two identical bedrooms and a full bath with huge tub between the two. All three of these rooms are served with identical dormers with curved-topped French windows that peak out over the street scene far below. The curved plaster-on-lathe ceilings are so gracefully formed, yet the floors here are only common heart-pine while the two more formal floors below have beautiful oak hardwood.  I could continue on and on with more details about this unique and beautiful home but  I shall save the rest for a future post.  However,  should you be interested in making an appointment to see this splendid and lovingly constructed historic Cape Charles home, please give Blue Heron a call at 757-331-4885  or email me at davidk@esva.net.

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Our Historic Homes For Sale – Enjoy The Romance Of Living In A Yesteryear Home On Virginia’s Eastern Shore

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Grand Old Homes Along The Beachfront

If you are thinking of buying a historic home on the  Eastern Shore of Virginia,  you’ll be happy to know that most  of the older  homes here have not been razed to build something modern but instead have been lovingly restored.   As a consequence,  for our size and low density population,  the Eastern Shore of Virginia boasts  a  substantial number of beautifully renovated and modernized  Victorian era or older  homes.  And some spectacular historic real estate on the Eastern Shore of Virginia is  for currently sale at very attractive prices.  ( Check out our historic home listings on the web at  www.blueheronva.com .)

  Indeed,  several of  our little Northampton County towns,  including Cape Charles, Virginia  and Cheriton, Virginia,  were  actually founded around the late 1800’s  and their  architecture consists substantially of   Victorian style homes along with Georgian Revival,  America Four Square, etc..

The Amazing 17 Mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge & Tunnel

Now for a   brief history lesson…  Discovered in 1608,  with English settlements dating from the  1620’s,  the Eastern Shore of Virginia  was,  for a long time,  geographically very isolated.  Farming and seafood were the economic engines and remain important  today.  Travel to mainland Virginia was by boat trip across the Chesapeake Bay,  a very substantial trip.  ( Even today,  most locals here say “I’m going across the Bay today” rather than “I’m going to Virginia Beach/etc. today”,   a throw-back to the days before the construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge & Tunnel when traveling across the Bay by boat was lengthy and possibly arduous.   If a sudden storm were to come  up   “going across the Bay”  back then was a pretty big deal.  Now , with the truly amazing 17 mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge,  ( www.cbbt.com ) this previously difficult  journey has been reduced to a scenic 15 minute car ride. )  Families tended to stay on the Shore and on the farm because,  back in the day,  farming and seafood here were both very, very lucrative.  Beautiful homes were built,  both in-town and out on the farms  and these homes were passed down through the generations.  Today,  neither farming nor seafood is quite so appealing and some farms and and a number of lovely historic homes in our towns have been purchased by people  moving here from out of the area,  as my family and I did,  to enjoy the Eastern Shore’s relaxed, coastal way of  life.   The point of this being that homes that have been torn down in other areas to build new developments have generally been renovated and restored here,  enabling the Eastern Shore of Virginia to retain a certain romance,   a true sense of yesteryear that many other rural areas have already lost.( www.esvatourism.org/history.asp )

5 Bedroom, 5 & 1/2 Bath, 3000 Square Foot Historic Craftsman Cottage Style Home

Two very different examples of  historic homes for sale on Virginia’s Eastern Shore include a beautiful  in-town Craftsman cottage style home built in 1913  and an amazing waterfront historic home,  situated on five acres in the country,  the earliest section of which was built in the late 1600’s.    The Craftsman cottage style home (www.antiquehomestyle.com ) ,  has been meticulously restored,  with over  3000 square feet,  featuring  five bedrooms and five and a half  baths,  located only about 500 feet from the wide sandy beach in the quaint coastal town of Cape Charles, Virginia with amenities like beach,  golf and marinas.  Shown on HGTV’s  “If Walls Could Talk” ,  it’s  currently serving as a very successful B&B.   However,  its open, airy floor plan and modern conveniences  will make it a wonderful personal residence,  offering great entertaining spaces.  Friends and relatives— come on down !   All the  “must have”  historic treatments are here — ten foot ceilings,  raised panel doors,  wainscoating,  columned room dividers, moldings, etc.  Walk to the beach in 30 seconds,  enjoy water views  and dazzling sunsets from the huge  front porch.  Golf carts are  “street legal”  in Cape Charles so you can  “go-green”  and zip over to the Cape Charles Coffee House,  etc.  for lunch in your electric cart.  Offered at $585,000,  this fine home can be a wonderful personal residence or kept  as a B&B,  the perfect opportunity to have a home business.

                                

On the other end of the spectrum is the nearly 4000 sq. ft.  “Wellington House”,   located on the water  in the country about 20 minutes from Cape Charles.  Situated  on a colorful, deep saltwater inlet from the Chesapeake Bay,  this amazing four bedroom, three bath home  with an existing backyard dock  is a rare opportunity to marry a love of  historic homes with a love of  boating.   An absolute gem,  built of  brick,  Flemish bond style,  this home’s earliest section dates back to the late 1600’s .  When you enter the original quarter kitchen with its huge hearth and beams, used now as a sitting room,  it’s like going back in time to the Colonial days.  High ceilings,  additional  fireplaces and wide plank floors throughout lend this special home an authenticity and ambience that few historic homes can rival.   Add to that its amazing waterviews,  backyard pier for a  boat  and the seclusion offered by its five acre size and it totals one terrific historic home,  all this offered at the attractive price of $1,495,000.  

                                  

We’ll have more posts soon about the opportunites to purchase historic real estate  on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.  In the meantime,  some of our unique historic home for sale listings can be viewed at   www.blueheronva.com  with prices  starting at $199,000  to over $3,500,000 for a home on 100+ acres.

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