HOME & GARDEN

Hot Property: Industrialist’s historic mansion for sale

Will Higgins
will.higgins@indystar.com
Rear view with spiral staircase at the original home on the historic Holcomb Estate, built by industrialist James Irving Holcomb.

A grand, spiral staircase, a marble entryway, vaulted ceilings with intricate carvings, leaded-glass windows, a slate roof, a library paneled in dark wood, fireplaces here and there and a shady, secluded terrace the length of the house.

The old mansion built by industrialist James I. Holcomb would seem like a lot of house for $499,000. Another historic home not far away, built in 1904 by magnate David M. Parry, is going for $3.5 million.

But the Holcomb place is different. Not only does it need work, it has been reconfigured into three condominiums.

One person owned the three condos. The owner stopped making mortgage payments, and the lender foreclosed. The house went on the market in March at $40,000 above today’s asking price.

The place is disjointed. Some of the bathrooms have a disco feel, with flashy light fixtures and glass block, and it seems like there are kitchens everywhere you look.

Actually there are three kitchens. One occupies what was Holcomb’s sunroom, a stunning, light-filled space with tall windows, slate floors and stone columns. Another is upstairs, just off what was probably the original master bedroom.

Holcomb built his country estate in 1927. A few years later came the Great Depression, when great fortunes were lost.

But not Holcomb’s. He and business partner Fred Hoke proved to be extremely adept at capitalism. As manufacturers, Holcomb & Hoke were nimble. For instance, when sales of their popular popcorn machines slowed, H&H switched to an early form of jukebox, and later to cleaning supplies, and later to those accordion-like room dividers on tracks you see in church basements.

Holcomb died in 1962 at age 86 — at home, while watching television, he “sat down on a chaise longue, and fell back,” The Star reported. By that time, he’d reportedly given away some $4 million and had $2 million left. He never finished college, but he was a major benefactor of Butler University. Butler’s Holcomb Planetarium was a gift from him, as was the carillon next to Holcomb Lake, which itself is at the edge of Holcomb Gardens. He gave the mansion to Butler, too, and the school used it for dance classes.

Holcomb and his wife had a daughter, but the daughter died young.

Some 70 prospective buyers have toured the mansion during three open houses, said Andrea Lynn Hutson of Berkshire Hathaway, who has the listing. But there’ve been no offers.

The house’s setting is not as baronial as it was when Holcomb lived there. In the 1980s Butler sold the estate, once known for its Japanese gardens, to a developer who subdivided the some 40 acres into 50 condominiums. The condos practically abut the old mansion. (Dr. Jack Ramsay and his wife lived in one during his brief tenure as the Pacers’ coach in the late ’80s.)

The condos, which cost from $200,000 to $300,000, carry a $450-a-month condo association fee.

The sticking point for would-be buyers who want to return it to a single-family home is that under the condo rules the mansion must account for three monthly dues payments, not one, Hutson said. That comes to $1,350 a month.

Despite such barriers, the house has a lot of panache.

“It’s regal, this house is regal,” Hutson said, “like a piece of history.”

Historically the Holcomb mansion — on a ridge above the White River — is an Indianapolis example of what historians call the American country house movement. In the early 1900s, while rich people built big houses on Meridian Street, very rich people, hoping to get away from the grime of growing industrialization, lit for the boondocks where they built really big houses on huge, well-manicured lots.

In Indianapolis the best known of these is J.K. Lilly’s Oldfields, just across the river from Holcomb’s place. Lilly’s, now part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and open to the public, is fancier than Holcomb’s, but not by a lot.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.

About the Home

Location: 1705 Glencary Crest, 46228.

Details: Seven bedrooms, three kitchens, six and a half baths, six-car garage, built in 1927.

Asking price: $499,000.

BLC: 21340696

Contact: Andrea Hutson, Real Estate Specialist, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Indiana Realty, (317) 883- 3303.