It seems this is the season of multimillion dollars homes in U.S. After America’s New Most Expensive Home For Sale – $135 Million Crespi-Hicks Estate in Dallas, one of the most celebrated and historic estates in the San Francisco area – Guigne Court, owned by Christian de Guigne IV is up for sale with also nine-figure price tag, or more precisely $100 million. Secluded mansion on 47 acres in Hillsborough near the border of the city of San Mateo has been in de Guigne’s family for 150 years, and this is the first time it’s up for sale. But what is interesting and definitely unusually: The 75-year-old de Guigne comes with the house. He’s retaining a life estate in the property, according to the Journal, which gives him exclusive use of the home for as long as he is alive. The reason he’s selling, his attorney told the Journal, is for estate-planning purposes.
Estate and lands of de Guigne
Sitting on a hilltop at the end of a 4,500-foot driveway, the historic mansion offers breathtaking vistas of San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. The house was built in 1918 (or some sources say 1913) as a wedding present for Christian de Guigne, 2nd, and his bride from the groom’s father. Decorated by celebrated interior designer Anthony Hail, magnificent 16,000 sqft mansion now boasts seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a ballroom, a flower-arranging room, a swimming pool designed by landscape architect Thomas Church, and no fewer than six staff rooms (a servants’ wing with four maids’ rooms and two chauffeurs’ rooms).
The first Christian de Guigne, who founded what became the Leslie Salt Company (the world’s largest solar evaporation plant for the production of salt) and the Stauffer Chemical Company (which manufactured herbicides for corn and rice), had married the eldest daughter of millionaire Gold Rush banker John Parrott in 1879, starting the dynasty. [Sotheby’s International Realty]
The deGuigné Estate represents a rare opportunity to own one of California’s few remaining mansions surrounded by substantial acreage near an urban center
