On the Market in the Poconos: Live-Work-Play Farmstead in Stroudsburg
You’d need to build a new barn if you wanted to raise horses or livestock on this 60-acre estate, but you could do just about anything else you want to with this attractive, meticulously maintained manor, including fish and show off your car collection, right now.
Have you dreamed of living the country life, but find those suburban estates just not rural enough?
There’s no disputing the truly rural nature of this 60-acre estate on the banks of Cherry Creek, about six miles southwest of Stroudsburg and 10 miles from East Stroudsburg and the Delaware Water Gap.
Lower Cherry Valley Road, the creek and this Stroudsburg estate farmhouse for sale all lie in a broad valley between two mountain ridges. The Delaware River splits both in two, creating the famed recreation area. You will no doubt want to take your friends to see it, and maybe take them out to dinner in East Stroudsburg too, when they come up to visit, but chances are that the rest of the time, you will find this rural retreat has everything you could want. (So might your friends.)
This plot has a history that stretches back to at least the dawn of the 19th century; the oldest structure still standing on the property is a spring house built in 1817. A second building, quite possibly a bank barn since vanished, was erected in 1832; its foundation survives and now supports a three-story carriage house with guest quarters.
It’s likely that the house now standing here, which dates to 1902, replaced an earlier farmhouse on this site. The current owners of this farm bought it in 2000 and made a number of enhancements to it, including expanding the main house and building the carriage house on that 1832 foundation.
The living and dining rooms of the original main house have been combined into a single, open great room with large windows looking out on the grounds and hills that surround it.
They preserve the house’s original character while adding modern features, including a gas fireplace.
A modern kitchen lies off the dining area, in one of the additions to the main house. It has plenty of space for you to prepare a real feast for your family and guests, and if you’ve invited more people than can fit around a large dining table, you can seat the overflow at the breakfast bar.
One of this house’s two primary suites occupies the other side of the original house’s main floor, making one-floor living possible.
Both it and the second primary suite on the far side of the kitchen have up-to-date bathrooms; the one in this primary suite includes an old-fashioned clawfoot tub.
A third bedroom also occupies the extension beyond the kitchen, and below it is a walkout basement rec room.
The other three bedrooms are part of the guest or in-law apartment in the carriage house, which has its own living room, kitchen and two bathrooms. There’s also a large home office with a high vaulted ceiling and a full wet bar.
In that 1832 foundation, the owners put three garages that can hold not only seven cars but also workshop space among them. If you’re an auto buff, you will no doubt thank the owners for leaving you this great space to store and work on them.
When you feel like entertaining outdoors, you can do so in the pavilion behind the house and carriage house. It also has a stone fireplace that provides warmth on those cool spring and fall evenings.
And Cherry Creek runs along the front of your property, which includes 1,000 feet of stream banks. This means you have no need to leave your manor to enjoy great trout fishing. In back, you can go hunting, hiking or tooling around in your all-terrain vehicle.
As it stands now, you can already grow a variety of crops and raise small animals on this property, which is protected by an Act 319 farmland conservation easement. The current owners have a flock of chickens. The lot’s zoning also allows you to raise horses and livestock on it, but to do that, you’d want to add a barn back to this farm estate, as the one currently standing is too small for that purpose.
Thanks to both the conservation easement and the nature of the terrain, the development that has been spreading across the Poconos isn’t likely to turn this Stroudsburg estate farmhouse for sale into an island of rural tranquility in the midst of suburbia. Your neighbors — or your former neighbors — back in Villanova or Newtown Square will no doubt be green with envy as a result.
THE FINE PRINT
BEDS: 6 (3 in main house, 3 in carriage house)
BATHS: 5 full, 1 half (3 full, 1 half in main house, 2 full in carriage house)
SQUARE FEET: 6,006 (both structures combined)
SALE PRICE: $1,480,000
OTHER STUFF: Thanks to the Act 319 use restrictions, the property taxes are a modest $9,727.70 per year as of 2020. Those restrictions, however, do not prevent you from building additional houses for family members on the site.
917 Lower Cherry Creek Rd., Stroudsburg, Pa. 18360 [Michael O’Donnell | MORE Modern Real Estate LLC via Realtor.com]