Lake George mansion on the block for $7.9M
1895 home on 6.3 acres has eight bedrooms and seven fireplaces
Seven fireplaces enough for you? You’re in luck, a home in Lake George is back on the market if you’ve got the money.
A stop along Millionaire’s Row in Lake George is on the market.
Built as a summer home in 1895 for Royal C. Peabody, the founder of the Brooklyn Edison Company, the mansion at 3232 Lake Shore Drive is a massive two-and-a-half-story home with a footprint of rough-cut granite and more than 13,000 square feet of living space. The upper stories have a half-timbered exterior often found in Tudor revival architecture, inlaid with yellow stucco.
It has eight bedrooms, seven fireplaces, eight full bathrooms, two covered boat houses, an elevator, a 17-bay garage, a guest house, a wine cellar that holds 4,000 bottles and a commanding view of the lake. The Peabodys called it Wikiosco, “home on beautiful waters” in Algonquin.
It’s listed for $7.9 million. Owner Kate Serlin has already turned down one offer. Local zoning allows for more buildings on the 6.3-acre lot, said listing agent Christine Marchesiello of Keller Williams Realty Capital District. As a way of further marketing the property, Serlin hired a landscape architect to produce drawings of six townhouses on the lot to show how it could be done.
Kate and her husband, the late obstetrician Stephen Serlin, bought the house in 1990. It was his idea; he loved Victorian furniture, and enjoyed filling the empty house with the right pieces. Serlin was president of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center board in the early 2000s.
“I felt like it was crazy. I told him, ‘I’m not cleaning it, but otherwise I’m all in,’” Serlin said Thursday.
The house wasn’t winterized
when the couple bought it. They added insulation, upgraded the windows, installed a large oil furnace and sprinklers for the massive lawn. They had no historic pictures of the interior to help them furnish the house, but wanted to recreate something the Peabodys would recognize. According to “The Great and the Gracious on Millionaires Row,” a comprehensive book on the people who summered in the grand houses along the lake, Royal Peabody loved to entertain and filled the house with guests all summer. The Serlins lived a quieter life, Kate Serlin said; Wikiosco was where her son grew up. He now lives out of state.
“We were a family just like anyone else on the lake. We just happened to have a bigger house,” she said.
Dr. Serlin died in September. In accordance to his wishes, there was no public notice and only a small, invite-only funeral, Kate Serlin said.
Serlin said her favorite part of the house is the kitchen, where she still spends much of her time. She and her husband kept the wainscoting but otherwise completely rebuilt the kitchen. She has sold her boats and much of the furniture. When the house sells, she plans to move to the Saratoga area. She’s keeping one treasured item: the grandfather clock she bought at an auction with her husband, the first thing he entrusted her to bid on.
“I’ve wound it every Friday for 28 years,” she said.
Charles R. Wood, the founder of the Great Escape, once owned the house. It was also a summer restaurant in the 1970s called Blenheim, Serlin said. The property has been for sale in the past, once priced at $17.9 million.
The Serlins never put a realistic price on the house because Dr. Serlin never really wanted to sell, Marchesiello said
- he loved it. She based the current price on the average selling price of high-end homes around Lake George, plus the nearly unheard-of lake frontage and acreage. The house has public water and a private septic system. It is in the Lake George school district. The annual taxes are $65,610.
Kate Serlin said she has no preference if the house continues as a residence or takes on a commercial use. The house is glorious, Serlin said, but it needs a lot of maintenance.
“I had a great life here, but it’s time for someone else to take over,” she said.