Located in McLean, Va., overlooking the Potomac River, is the six bedroom, six bathroom Falls residence, a three-story, single-family house, built in 1999. Featuring interiors by Washington, D.C.–based designer Thomas Pheasant and custom furniture, the 48,900-square-foot residence is now up for sale for $62.95 million, making it the most expensive piece of property in the Washington D.C. area. The residence includes a gate house with staff quarters, a 30-car parking garage, a wine cellar, a full-size tennis court, an infinity pool, and an outdoor terrace that offers panoramic views of the Great Falls. But, that's not all. The $62.95 million price tag will also get you a 2,764-square-foot, 1950s house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Named after late National Geographic photographer and writer Luis Marden and his wife Ethel, who commissioned Wright to design the residence in 1952, the Marden House is one of the three properties the architect designed in the Washington metropolitan area. Set into a rocky hillside, the almond-shaped, Usonian structure features 80 feet of floor-to-ceiling windows and is offered with some of the original, Wright-designed built-in furniture.
One of Wright’s Taliesin apprentices—Robert Beharka, who also oversaw the architect's Robert Llewellyn Wright house, in Bethesda, Md.—completed the house in 1959, one month after Wright’s death. The flat-roofed, concrete-block structure remained the Mardens' main residence until 2000 when it was purchased by late James Kimsey, co-founder of internet service provider AOL for $2.5 million. By the time Kimsey laid his hands on the house, it had suffered from some negligence and deferred maintenance, which led him to debate if the house was worth preserving. But eventually, he commissioned Chevy Chase, Md.–based contractor Bailey Adams of Adams General Contractors to restore the house in 2004.
“The Mardens weren’t wealthy and it just got away from them,” Adams said in a 2008 Frank Lloyd Building Conservancy article. “I’d been to the house many times so that I knew everything that was wrong with it: extensive interior and exterior damage from water, improperly sealed cinder block, the tar and gravel roof near collapse from the weight of successive coatings and dirt, and retaining walls [facing the river] that threatened to tear away from the base. The beautiful mahogany panels, garage doors, and trim hadn’t been varnished for years. Over all, it was a mess.”
Adams collaborated with Washington, D.C.–based Richard Williams Architects to restore the Marden House. The $1 million restoration—which won a merit award at 12th annual Residential Architect Design Awards in 2011—took approximately 18 months to complete and brought the rundown structure back to life.
“With the basic fabric of the house intact ... every piece of wood, inside and out, including every mahogany ceiling panel in the house and garage, has been refinished or replaced, as needed,” Adams said in the same story. “The red-tinted concrete floors throughout the house and garage have been ... restored.” The team also stabilized the riverside retaining walls, re-finished the roof with copper, restored the kitchen, and added new appliances. “All bedrooms retain [their] built-in bed, cabinets [and] closets, shelves, and desk area [and] the bathroom fixtures and tiles are all original.”
The Falls residence and the Marden House are jointly listed by Russell Firestone and Mark Lowham of Sotheby's International Realty's Washington, D.C. office.
Take a virtual tour of the Marden House here.
