Cliffholme, the 14,000-square-foot Green Spring Valley estate on 9 1/2 verdant acres scheduled to be auctioned Thursday, has been described by architects and historians as one of Baltimore's great houses.
The three-story house, capped by three large chimneys, sits atop a ridge with a spectacular view of the valley floor and environs. The home, with nine bedrooms, seven bathrooms and seven fireplaces, looks as though it could be a setting for a Jane Austen novel or a "Masterpiece Theater" production.
"It's a home that is extremely unique to the Baltimore landscape, and its architecture is paralleled by that found in Newport, R.I., or Greenwich, Conn.," said Karen Bisbee, a vice president of O'Conor, Piper & Flynn-ERA. "There are only a handful of houses in Baltimore as beautiful as Cliffholme."
It's unclear how the home -- on which construction began in 1848 -- came to be known as Cliffholme. But Bisbee, who specializes in the sale of large homes and farms, said, "It's very clear that this is a home that has lots of personal history and has seen plenty of love and laughter through the years."
"Cliffholme is a contributing house to the Green Spring Valley Historic District, which since the early 1980s has been on the National Register of Historic Places," said James T. Wollon Jr., a Havre de Grace architect.
Since 1959, the house has been owned by Reuben Fedderman, a retired East Baltimore furniture-store owner, and his wife, Beatrice. They lived in the house until this spring, when its contents were auctioned off by Alex Cooper Auctioneers Inc. The venerable Baltimore auction firm will now auction off the empty house.
"We liked it, and we were young. We had children when we bought it, and we also liked the privacy and security that it afforded," said Fedderman, 85, who ascribed his youthful attitude to the "good country air" he found there.
During a public preview last week, Fedderman, dressed in a crisply pressed seersucker suit, white shirt and carefully knotted tie, squinted in the orange glow of the late summer's afternoon. He looked wistfully at the old house and said to no one in particular, "It's beautiful. It's still beautiful."
A young visitor standing in the 70-foot-long reception hall blurted out to his mother that he thought it would make a fine setting for roller-blading.
In the butler's pantry, an annunciator -- an electronically controlled signal board or indicator -- still squawks out its demanding buzz for a maid or butler, while an old Kelvinator refrigerator sits unused.
In a square metal box attached to the kitchen wall is the Garrison Automatic Fire Alarm System that once protected the house and its valuable contents. Still clearly marked, it advises in case of an emergency to dial "Towson 923."
Deep in the multichambered basement, reinforced concrete beams support the three-story structure.
In a large chamber, still connected to a chimney, is the old unused coal-fired Eagle Range. In the furnace room sits a Pacific Steel Boiler Corp. boiler, big enough, it seems, to power an ocean liner.
Flow of visitors
"There has been a steady flow of visitors to the house since it was first opened for inspection. Interest has been high," said Paul Cooper of Alex Cooper, who expects the home to fetch a price of $1 million to $1.5 million.
For all of its size, Cliffholme sits unnoticed by passing motorists on Park Heights Avenue at the end of Stewart Road, a winding lane, barely a car-width wide, in Stevenson.
Along the quiet, pastoral lane are estates, many still occupied by descendants of Charles Morton Stewart, the Baltimore shipping merchant who made a fortune bringing Brazilian coffee to the city aboard his fleet of barkentines during the 19th century.
Stewart purchased the Cliffholme property in 1872 from Robert North Elder.
"Charles Morton Stewart bought Cliffeholme as a summer house. At the time, it was 'a square, deeply walled old house, rather plain in appearance inside and out.' But in a brief time it became a large, expansive, and hospitable home, brimming over with children, friends, and distinguished guests," wrote Dawn F. Thomas in "The Greenspring Valley: Its History and Heritage," published by the Maryland Historical Society in 1978.
Surveyed in 1702
The property was once part of Green Spring Punch, a 386-acre tract surveyed for Thomas Bale in 1702, and was subsequently owned by the Randall, Kelly, Appleton, Ross, Norris and Elder families.
In 1832, James Howard, son of Revolutionary War hero John Eager Howard and Margaretta Chew Howard, purchased the 168-acre estate for $10,000.
Howard was president of Franklin Bank and the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad from 1833 to 1835, later the Northern Central Railroad. The railroad constructed the Green Spring branch and erected a small station at Eccleston, near Cliffholme.
Construction of the house began in 1848, and six years later, after the death of Howard's wife, Catherine W. Johnson Ross, the property was offered for sale.
"The Mansion House was built of stone, and rough cast in the most substantial manner, about six years ago at a cost of near nine thousand dollars," said a contemporary newspaper description of the premises.
'A fine spring' near it
"It is 50 feet square, two stories high, with an attic, having an ornamental front porch extending along its entire front. A spacious central hall divides the principal rooms on the first floor, consisting of a drawing room, two parlours, a dining room; on the second floor are nine chambers; the kitchen and servants' rooms being in the basement; water is distributed through the entire building by pipes, and a fine spring that rises near to it," said the article.
Stewart expanded and modified the house and surrounding grounds to accommodate his 18 children. Two large parlors were constructed along with a study, picture gallery, library and "dancing room," while commodious rooms in the basement housed the kitchen, laundry, servants' quarters and a "lock-up" storeroom.
The halcyon days of Cliffholme occurred during its nearly 60-year occupancy by the Stewarts, when the house and grounds were the setting for the Valley horse crowd who gathered there for hunting meets and timber races.
It also was a literary and artistic salon where such notables as author Charles Dickens, James Cardinal Gibbons and Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins University, slept in its rooms, were entertained on its broad porches and feasted in its paneled mahogany dining room.
Gracious living
Eleanor Stewart Heiser, a daughter of Charles Morton Stewart, in her book, "Days Gone By," recalled the gracious living of the pre-income tax era, when her family left their home on Dolphin Street to escape the heat and humidity of Baltimore's famous summers.
Two large mule-drawn wagons transported steamer trunks and portmanteaus to the estate, while the older children and servants traveled by steam train to Eccleston.
Mrs. Stewart, dressed in the Stewart livery -- green broadcloth piped in red with a gold lace band around the black silk hat -- clip-clopped out of the city aboard the family carriage in the company of her youngest children.
"There were 13 master bedrooms. A large veranda encircled the house, which Mother had measured to know how many times 'up and down' made a mile, and on rainy days many constitutionals were taken there," Heiser wrote.
Stewart died in 1900, and his family continued living at the estate until 1928, when it was sold to Charles B. Alexander, founder of Alexander & Alexander, the Baltimore insurance brokerage.
At the height of the Jazz Age, Alexander initiated the major rebuilding and alteration of Cliffholme that transformed it from an essentially Italianate structure to a Tudor one.
Windows changed
Its facade was covered in cream-colored stucco while windows were changed to casements with mullions and leaded glass. Another highlight is the great mullioned window set above the entrance, recessed underneath a Tudor arch.
The roof is covered in Vermont slate with copper gutters and downspouts.
Other architectural highlights include marble fireplaces and mantels, finely detailed crown and dental moldings and mahogany paneling.
Its bathrooms are fitted out with 1920s-era plumbing fixtures and tubs large enough to accommodate the bulk of President William Howard Taft, who tipped the scales at 300-plus pounds.
Steven Troy, 34, a Baltimore attorney, is drawn to the house because of his love of Maryland history.
Compelling history
"It has three things. It is a beautiful property, a wonderful location and has historical value. This is a home for a CEO or president of a large corporation who entertains and wants a showplace," he said.
"But, it's the history of the house that calls me here," he said.
"My grandmother, Eleanor Gibson, came here and played as a child during the 1890s," said Nora Gibson Locke May, a Realtor with Hill & Co.
Walking under the three massive crystal chandeliers that illuminate the broad hall, May couldn't resist observing that such a house with "14,000 square feet of space certainly separates the men from the boys."
"It's a million-dollar fixer-upper. It's a straightforward house that cries out for some loving care. The buyer will know instantly what has to be done to it," said a Baltimore woman and potential buyer who asked that her name not be used.
Settlement in 45 days
Terms of the auction include $50,000 at the time of the sale in the form of cash, cashier's check or certified check with the balance in five business days and settlement within 45 days, according to Cooper.
Bisbee attributes the high interest level in the house to financial gains made in the stock market.
"People have grown more flush economically, and they're putting more money into their primary residences," she said.
She expects the buyer would most likely be "someone who enjoys children, dogs, entertaining and living the country life yet not being too far from Baltimore. Cliffholme is only five minutes from Greenspring Station."
What does concern her is someone coming in, bulldozing the house and developing the property.
"I pray that no one would tear down a house of such importance," she said.
Pub Date: 9/13/98