On Kiawah Island, South Carolina, a 16-acre two-story property – a historic home built for a soldier who ended up becoming state governor and a modern party space with a dedicated oyster station – is priced at $ 21 million.
If sold at the asking price, the property would be the most expensive single-family residential property ever sold on the island, said brokerage Danielle Whitson of Kiawah Island Real Estate.
In the 18th century, the property belonged to Arnoldus Vanderhorst, who served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War. In 1780, after a British commander ordered the seizure of properties belonging to participants in the Continental Congress, British troops occupied and subsequently burned down Vanderhorst’s house, according to a history of the property on the Charleston city government website. Around 1800, Mr. Vanderhorst built a replacement that still exists. He later became mayor of Charleston and governor of South Carolina.
More recently, the house has been unoccupied for about a century, although it has continued to be a popular tourist stop. In the early 1990s, the property was purchased by a group that included five brothers who are members of the Darby family, according to Joya Wolf, one of the sisters. The Darby family company owned Kiawah and developed many of the island’s golf homes and golf courses.
When they occupied the house, it was in a bad state of repair and had no plumbing or electricity. While planning a renovation, the family found a crocodile living in the basement, Wolf said. They had a taxidermist to preserve it.
The brothers spent about two years restoring the house. They restored the original pine flooring and the cypress wood cladding, as well as some of the original fireplaces and part of the banister on the main staircase. They also rebuilt an arched plaza in the front that had been boarded up and installed new corner additions with glass walls.
The approximately 6,800-square-foot house, which the family decorated according to the period, has a spacious entrance, a formal dining room with a fireplace, several living rooms and six large bedrooms.
As the main house is relatively formal, the family also decided to build the “stream house” – a more casual entertainment alternative with a huge outdoor kitchen, several bars, the oyster station and even a table designed to allow revelers dance in it, said Mrs. Wolf. She estimated the cost of restoring the main house and building the creek house at approximately 2,700 square feet north of $ 7 million.
After the houses were built, the brothers devised a “choice” system to schedule their times on the property in advance, but sometimes everyone tries to get together, packing the main house and the party house, Wolf said. As the property is on the Kiawah River, they participate in many water sports, as well as fishing and crabbing.
She said they are selling the property because the brothers are now spread across the country – she lives in Denver, for example – and the house is no longer used as before.
The housing market in Kiawah, a barrier island located about a 40-minute drive from Charleston, had a major boost with the pandemic, registering the highest sales volume in its history in 2020, according to Whitson, who said he saw buyers from all over the Northeast and even in the Midwest, as they committed themselves to a “lifestyle change”. There was $ 807 million in Kiawah sales last year, an increase of 169% over the previous year.
Write to Katherine Clarke at [email protected]
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