The Main House

Our beautiful limestone mansion with slate roof, located in the heart of Lancaster County’s Amish Country, was built in 1750.  We have 15 acres of farm and wood land. The stream, called Willow Run, that runs by our pond actually originates from the springhouse on the property. 

We believe the occupancy of the estate went through five phases.  The first homestead was the two story springhouse on the property.  In the lower section of the springhouse you can see the origin of the Willow Run Stream.  The spring comes in through the one wall, at approximately 300 gal/min, and runs out the other side and under our bridge.  The first floor has a historic fireplace.  It is an open room with a wooden floor.  In the back corner next to the fireplace behind a small door is a curved small staircase leading to the second floor.  Unfortunately, because the access to the second floor is so small it is almost impossible to move furniture up there.  It is a must see.

The second home built started the formation of what is now the main building. This much smaller section would most likely have been what we are presently using as the dining room, the bar, and the White Pine room.  During renovations we found evidence of an old fireplace and staircases.  The stones were charred on one side.  We also found evidence of an old stairway.  In the stone wall we found a hidden doorway with two very worn stair treads that over the years have been closed off.  The wood work in these sections is in a different, simpler style from the other rooms in the house. 

The third stage was the largest part of the house in the front.  Dating the wood work in this section places it approximately in the early 1800’s.  On the first floor the rooms added would have been the entranceway, stairs, living room and the ‘Hazelnut’ room.  On the second floor the Magnolia and Copper Beech Suites were added. And finally, the entire third floor. 

The fourth section built added the kitchen and additional servant’s quarters.  Historically the kitchen was kept separate from the house because of worries about possible fire.

The final fifth section was built in 1948 by the previous owners.  They added the wing that branches off the kitchen section at an angle.  It was used as a casual living room and for large parties. 

The house has a total of over 7500 square feet of living space (not including the full basement or the unheated attics) that was completely renovated by us and finished in January of 2007 after three years of sweat and labor.  Where possible we maintained the original layouts,  woodwork and flooring. We recycled as much as possible and had wood moldings remade to match if needed. Modern and fully equipped bathrooms were added to ensure each room had it's own private bathroom. All utilities were renewed and brought up to code. New geothermal heating and cooling was installed and state of the art security, phone & networking systems and whole house sound systems added.  Behind the scenes computer controls to manage these systems was installed. Despite of all these improvements the house is still over 95% original giving it that real old and historic house feel that we didn't want to destroy.  In late 2006 we added the beautiful board-and-batten barn and new driveway.