The 12-bedroom pillared Georgian-style mansion late investment manager Richard Driehaus owned on 40 acres in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, sold Friday for $36 million.whose identity could not yet be determined, is the highest on record in Lake Geneva and the highest in the history of the state of Wisconsin for a single-family home. In Illinois, higher sale prices for single-family homes only have been accompanied by large amounts of land.
Known today as Glanworth Gardens but originally called Wadsworth Hall, the Lake Geneva mansion, on Snake Road, is steeped in history. It was built in 1906 for noted banker and philanthropist Norman Wait Harris — also known as N.W. Harris — who was the namesake of the predecessor firm to Harris Bank. Harris named it Wadsworth Hall after his mother’s family.
Harris died in 1916, and his estate sold the mansion around 1920 to Yellow Taxi Cab Company founder Walden W. Shaw, who renamed the mansion The Stenning after his ancestral home in England. The estate later was owned by Shaw’s son-in-law, Daniel F. Peterkin, who was the president of the Morton Salt Company, and then by Peterkin’s son, who also had been president of Morton Salt.Driehaus bought the mansion from Peterkin’s heirs for $4.
The mansion has 12½ bathrooms, 13 fireplaces, a grand staircase and entrance hall, a lakeside library with rich oak paneling and a kitchen with a La Cornue range and custom cabinetry. Outside on the property are a four-bedroom guesthouse, a carriage house, staff offices, a boathouse and a children’s village.
Lake Geneva’s previous record sale for a single home is the $12.75 million sale in April of a 10-bedroom, 13,000-square-foot lakefront mansion to Thomas Tisbo.Latest Elite Street
It is built as the fruit of the labor of others.
The guy who owns that house made sure his wife would never find him with all those bathrooms… or at least made sure he’d get through a few articles or a chapter or two while she searched the other 11.5.
Maybe folks struggling with grocery bills could give f...k all about 12.5 bathrooms and a La whatever range.
Alternative headline: Someone spent $36m to live in Wisconsin.
Stately Wayne Manor is for sale? What's the basement look like?