Thursday, July 30, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Minding their manor
The Manor House in Roanoke may not be livable now, but one couple hope to change that.
Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times
Chas Goodrum with Hart & Hart Inc. works on a bathroom in the Manor House, a masonry mansion with nine bedrooms among other amenities.
Al Henry (left) hopes to be living in the grand mansion in Roanoke by year's end.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Dan Casey
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The plan sounded like a good one: eight luxurious eco-friendly patio homes, 12 condominiums in a new building, and as many as six more carved out of one of Roanoke's grandest yet vacant mansions.
All on a little more than 7 acres perched on a southside city hilltop with sweeping, panoramic views of the Roanoke Valley and its surrounding mountains.
Then the real estate market dropped off a cliff and the stock market followed. Development loans evaporated like a shallow puddle on a hot summer day. A bank clamored for the money it already had fronted.
What's a physician-turned-developer to do?
If you're Dr. Al Henry, the answer is sell the surrounding land, fix up the house and move in.
That's the short story behind what is happening now over the Manor House, a nine-bedroom, Colonial-style mansion that hasn't had a resident for at least 15 years.
Henry, 59, who's had more success as a breast surgeon than he has as a real estate developer, packed his possessions and moved from his rented South Roanoke condo into the home of his girlfriend, Amy McAden, 47.
By year's end, they intend to be living in the grand old mansion a short distance off Franklin Road.
"Welcome to South Fork," Henry joked last week when I showed up to tour the place.
Huge, solid, imposing
The Manor House measures out at 7,000 finished square feet. That doesn't include the roughed-in bomb shelter and escape tunnel in its basement, which looks something like a dungeon, its concrete-floored attic and cupola that comprises the third story, or the huge garage on one end.
It is almost wholly built of concrete and plaster, except for its brick facade and imposing slate roof.
The house sports a split staircase that rises from a grand entry foyer into a large circular balcony on the second story. Recently, a movie crew filmed a scene for a horror flick there, Henry said.
There's a master suite with his-and-her bathrooms, other bedrooms with pink- and blue-tiled girls' and boys' bathrooms, separate servants' quarters, and a double-doored steel wall safe that's about the size of a kitchen range.
"There's almost no wood in it," Henry said while giving me a tour.
"I really think that the only thing that could take it down is a wrecking ball," McAden added.
Airstrip, patio homes
Until a handful of years ago, its demolition seemed like a real possibility.
Developer Paul Wood built the house on 54 acres in 1948. He was an amateur pilot who used to land his private plane on a dirt airstrip on the property.
In 1986, the Wood family sold it to Friendship Foundation, which owns the Friendship Retirement Community in Roanoke County.
The Friendship Foundation had intended to build another retirement community on the land. But those plans instead morphed into three high-end patio home communities with houses priced from $300,000 and up.
The Manor House was originally intended to be a community center for those patio homes. But that never happened either. A 2002 lawsuit one of the patio homeowners filed caused Friendship Foundation to promise not to tear down the house until 2013 at the earliest.
Henry and some partners in Icon Development bought the house and 7.2 acres from the Friendship Foundation in 2007 for $1.35 million.
After the real estate market crashed, Icon abandoned its plans and sold off 6 acres to satisfy some bank loans, leaving Henry with a house on a little more than 1 acre that nobody wanted to buy.
Work to be done
Henry and McAden hope to move in by October, or December at the latest. Henry hopes to sell it down the line.
Right now, it doesn't look like a place anyone would want to live, at least on the inside.
Wallpaper and peeling paint hang off the walls and ceilings in many of the rooms.
Nearly every square inch of the home's concrete flooring seems to be covered by chalky dust.
Bathroom and kitchen fixtures that were cutting edge in the 1950s look more like items that now belong in a rubble landfill.
But the plumbing is good, and sewer and water lines soon will be in place. Most of the rest of the work required is cosmetic.
Soon, one of Roanoke's grand residences will be a home once again.
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
