New Jersey Straus Compound!

New Jersey Straus Compound!

New Jersey Straus Compound!

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With the wealth they had accumulated as co-owners of Macy’s Department Store, Isadore Straus and his wife, Ida, were sailing to New York after a summer in the South of France on the ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage of the Titanic. Married in 1871 with seven children, Ida refused to board a lifeboat without her husband. She gave her fur coat and lifeboat seat to her maid. Their deaths were depicted in several films about the Titanic and a memorial plaque in Macy's New York flagship store.

One of Isadore and Ida's sons, Herbert Straus, married Therese Kuhn from a wealthy German banking family. Though Herbert’s life had centered around New York City, the Kuhn family and their peer group were accustomed to having summer country homes in New Jersey. After they were married, the couple decided to built their own country home as a French Norman farm.

Cobble Close Farm was designed by noted architect Alfred Hopkins. It was such a large project that a separate train line was built to deliver the materials to the site, most of which were delivered from Europe. Those that were unattainable in Europe were hand crafted on site by the French and Italian craftsmen who immigrated specifically to work on the buildings. As the compound was built, the couple occupied a temporary house located on the same spot where their mansion was to be built. Cobble Close Farm was run as a gentleman’s dairy farm but Herbert died in 1933, before the main 35-bedroom chateau was constructed.

When Herbert died, all of the farm buildings and servants’ quarters except the mansion were done and Therese lived on at the farm, not having funds to build the mansion due to the Depression. She finally put it up for sale in the 1950s but was unable to sell it as a whole, so she sold it in portions. Each of the buildings sold to a different owner with the colonnade, swimming pool and grounds used in common.

This is the first time the property has been on the market as a whole, with all four owners agreeing to sell at one time. Now classified as a co-op, it is divided into four luxurious homes but is zoned for five. There are a total of 18 bedrooms and 15 baths with structures of 29,000 square feet spread over 13 acres. Grounds are lush with plantings, large pond, fountains and Greco-Roman statues and cattle in pastures which have been leased. The estate borders the Navesink Country Club in an exclusive neighborhood along the Navesink River. The homes are connected around a central cobblestone courtyard and can be used as a single family home or family compound. For more information.

Cobble Close Farm, part of Macy’s Department Store history in Red Bank, New Jersey with Jon Bon Jovi as a neighbor, now for sale, priced at $10.9 million.

Source: www.exite-listings.com