Just Listed: Rustic Craftsman Estate in Milford

Want to make your friends in Gladwyne jealous? Buy this one-of-a-kind Craftsman mansion at 191 Miller Park Rd., Milford, NJ 08848, then invite them over to visit. With more than 24,000 square feet of space and seven bedrooms, you could invite them all over at the same time and even put a few of them up for the night. / Photography by Juan Vidal Photography via Coldwell Banker Hearthside

One of the best parts of a trip to America’s national parks is staying in the lodges located within them. The best ones mix rustic ambience with luxurious accommodations, and when you’re ready to explore the park, it’s right outside your door.

Perhaps the most iconic of the lodges is the Old Faithful Inn in America’s first national park, Yellowstone. Built shortly after 1900, this log house on steroids defines rustic luxury with its log construction and elegant details.

Exterior rear

Buy this rustic Milford Craftsman estate house for sale and you can save yourself the expense of traveling to Yellowstone. Granted, you won’t see a famous geyser outside your bedroom when you get up in the morning, but you will enjoy a spectacular view of the countryside surrounding this house all the same.

And since it comes with 125 acres of that countryside, you can craft your own national-park-like experience entirely within it. Or you can simply work with all the indoor and outdoor amenities its owner has already put in place for you.

Aerial view of property

This property puts the “farm” in the phrase “gentleman’s farm.” Those 125 acres include two vineyards, vegetable garden beds, an apiary, fig trees and a chicken coop along with several miles of hiking trails. Owner Craig Rothenberg, a personal injury attorney who assumed stewardship of this estate 13 years after it was completed in 2003, has devoted much time and attention to both caring for the house and tending to the farm along with his wife.

While the house was completed in 2003, it has the air of a place built about a century earlier. In other words, around the time the Old Faithful Inn was built.

Like that grand lodge, you will find plenty of rough-hewn logs on the inside, most notably on the stair and balcony railings. These give the house that Yellowstone-ish ambiance.

So do details like the radiators found in many of this house’s rooms that provide some of its radiant heat (most of which comes from its floors). Unlike the logs and much of the wood used on both the inside and the outside of the house, they’re not recycled or reclaimed but rather custom-built. The same goes for the other vintage-looking equipment throughout the house, such as the belt-driven ceiling fans.

Front door

The listing agent uses the word “bespoke” to describe this house, and that term from the world of English tailoring fits perfectly. The house announces its bespoke-ness with its front door, which features a hand-carved, double-sided work of art over its windows.

And don’t let the turn-of-the-20th-century ambience fool you: This house is totally modern and outfitted for the way we live now.

Great room

The great room has balconies flanking it at either end — one over the foyer and the other over the end looking out on the backyard and grounds. It has a grand full-height stone fireplace on its living room side and a modernist spiral staircase leading to the rear balcony on its dining room one. It also has comfortable nooks for sitting and game-playing.

Kitchen

Next to the dining room sits the kitchen, another rustic-yet-modern space. In addition to a large island and buffet with granite countertops, a sunny breakfast nook, a large Sub-Zero refrigerator-freezer, a drawer microwave and a commercial-grade range, it has a custom-built Finnish soapstone fireplace and pizza oven.

Family room

A large archway connects the kitchen and the family room, which also has a full-height stone fireplace. The laundry room, a mudroom/catering kitchen combo and the second of two primary-bedroom suites lie just beyond this room.

The first one is located just beyond the living-room side of the great room. It has four separate rooms connected by a foyer.

Library

The first room in the suite is the library, whose full-height fireplace is the flip side of the living room’s. It has a post-and-beam ceiling like that in the great room, but with a clerestory added to allow sunlight to pour in from above.

Primary bedroom

The bedroom just beyond it has yet another full-height stone fireplace, a beamed cathedral ceiling and sliding doors that lead to the rear balcony overlooking the backyard. This balcony, by the way, wraps around the entire rear of the house.

Primary bathroom

French doors next to the bedroom fireplace open to a spa bath that features a glass-enclosed steam shower, circular Jacuzzi tub and dual vanities flanking the tub.

Home office

And a corridor leads from the bedroom to a home office, one of at least two spaces in this house that serve as workplaces.

In addition to the loft balcony over the foyer, the main staircases flanking that foyer lead to hallways serving three more en-suite bedrooms.

Beyond the bedrooms over the kitchen and family room is a large open room that also functions as an office. Beyond it is a large storage room. A door at its far end leads to the two-bedroom accessory apartment over the three-car garage. Both the storeroom and the accessory apartment have stairways leading directly to the outside; the one to the accessory apartment also leads to one of the garage bays.

Lower level lounge

Lower level lounge

The ground floor contains even more space for entertaining, leisure and recreation. In its center is a large lounge that has room for a game table, a stone fireplace and a wet bar next to the stairs leading up.

Wine cellar

Arcade

A wine cellar sits next to the wet bar, and an arcade fills a room one step up from the lounge.

Music room

In the wing beyond the fireplace you will find music and exercise rooms along with a spa bath and sauna.

Squash court foyer

Squash court

And a staircase just past the wine cellar leads down to a combination squash court and basketball half-court.

Backyard and pool

Beyond the terrace past the lounge you will find the swimming pool and adjacent gazebo. A tennis court sits just up the hill from the gazebo.

Tennis court and solar panels

All of this is powered by solar panels on the grounds and an on-site commercial generator in the octagonal utility building on the property. It also contains a 4,000-gallon oil tank and fuel tanks and pumps for the farm equipment.

Bank barn

Two 19th-century bank barns on the property are in the process of being restored with updated electric, water and septic systems. A newer pole barn on the property features a 7,200-square-foot clear-span space with a workshop and office/storage space over the workshop. This barn was recently built to house the farm equipment.

If you really wanted to up the farm quotient, you could expand the chicken coop to raise 50 chickens or more and add more planter beds to grow more produce. You could then sell both the eggs and the veggies at your own farm stand. Holland Township ordinances permit property owners in agricultural residential zones to set up their own stands to sell food they grow if their lots are large enough, and this lot certainly is that. You would, however, need to add a parking lot next to it and set it back 50 feet from Miller Park Road.

This house is also very well suited to serve as an event facility or organizational retreat. But don’t get ideas: My reading of township zoning ordinances leads me to conclude that neither of these would be permitted uses, and besides, Miller Park Road couldn’t handle the traffic. You can, however, rent the accessory apartment to a tenant or visitors. Consult the listing agent for the last word on this subject, though.

Milford lies just outside the Philadelphia metropolitan area in Hunterdon County, N.J., but you can get to the town by crossing the Delaware on the bridge at Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County. After passing through Milford’s historic and charming town center, a drive of about three miles on back roads takes you to this Milford Craftsman estate house for sale.

And from its hilltop site, you can be the lord of all you survey, for most of what you will see immediately around it is your own property. Think of it as your own little national park.

THE FINE PRINT

BEDS: 7

BATHS: 7 full, 3 half

SQUARE FEET: 24,774

SALE PRICE: $18,000,000

191 Miller Park Rd., Milford, NJ 08848 [Jacqueline Hillgrube and Deborah Summer | Coldwell Banker Hearthside]