Price: $8.95 million
In its heyday, this California wine country estate was a hub for celebrities, including Hollywood luminaries Mary Pickford and John Barrymore.
It was once a section of the summer estate of sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels and his art-patron wife, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels. The property, which is across from the Spreckels Mansion, is in the historic Sobre Vista Estates neighborhood and includes the tennis court where Charlie Chaplin, Bing Crosby and even Ronald Reagan once played.
The house was built in the late 1800s by the Spreckels family as a recreation and entertainment center. This is the first time in a quarter-century that it has been for sale.
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“It’s like a mini-Four Seasons resort,” said Thomas Henthorne of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty. “The house was gut renovated, and the grounds have been relandscaped.”
The 6-foot-tall de Bretteville Spreckels, who was known as Big Alma and the Great-Grandmother of San Francisco, was a scandalous socialite—in her younger years, she was a nude model.
She assembled an important art collection, and donated her museum, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, to the City of San Francisco in 1924.
In the 1940s, she sold the summer home, which has been restored, and this separate parcel was created. Spreckels—and her philanthropy—outlasted the estate and her much older first husband: She died in 1968 at age 87; (he died, at age 67, in 1924.)
Stats
The 6,420-square-foot house, built in 1968 and gut-renovated in 2019, has seven bedrooms, seven full bathrooms and two half baths. It’s set on 2.26 acres.
Amenities
Each bedroom has a private garden terrace. Other amenities include a billiards lounge, four fireplaces, a great room with a bar, a fitness studio and a whole-house audio system. The grounds, which were designed by Penney Magrane in 2019, have gardens and an orchard. There also is a 60-foot saltwater pool with custom lighting and a fire feature; a kitchen, a dining pavilion; tennis, bocce, croquet and volleyball courts; a spa pavilion; and a geothermal bath pavilion with Japanese-style copper soaking tubs.
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Neighborhood Notes
Sobre Vista Estates, whose Spanish name means “About the View,” is minutes from the area’s wineries, golf courses, hiking trails and the shops and restaurants of Sonoma Plaza.
“It’s a very established neighborhood and very sought after,” Henthorne said. “It has mature trees, large lots and privacy—you don’t get that in other parts of Sonoma.”
Agent: Thomas Henthorne of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty