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click photos for larger imagePhotographed by Erik Kvalsvik
When Chuck Nabit and Mary Kay Groeninger first laid eyes on Cedarwood in August 2001, neither imagined a day they’d call the 40-room mansion that sits at the end of a tree-lined driveway off North Charles Street “home.”
“It was a dark, dark place,” says Mary Kay, an accountant with Grant Thornton LLP.
“It looked like a haunted house. There were no flowers. The lawns weren’t cut. The trees were dead,” says Chuck, owner of Westport Group, a Baltimore company that develops and operates health care facilities.
Designed by respected Baltimore architect Lawrence Hall Fowler and built for Alexander Duncan, founder of Commercial Credit Corp., a forerunner in the automobile financing industry, the 1927 stone mansion was once deemed “the finest home in Baltimore.” Given its marble- and slate-tiled grand ballroom, intricate plaster molding, painted murals, 11 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, formal boxwood garden and its piece de resistance— an indoor pool— the title seems apt.
But the Cedarwood Chuck and Mary Kay encountered in 2001 was a far cry from the grand mansion Duncan occupied until his death in 1972. “There was trash everywhere,” says Chuck. The then-current owners of the home, aging and unable to maintain the huge house, had moved into just two rooms; the rest had fallen into disrepair.
And yet, four months later, when the couple got engaged and began looking for a home to accommodate their furniture and art collection, Cedarwood didn’t seem such an impossible dream. Chuck went to see it for the second time in March 2002. After walking through the house once, he and realtor Karen Hubble Bisbee drew up an offer on the hood of her car.
“I told Mary Kay that if we got the house, we’d have our wedding there,” says Chuck.
“I didn’t even have to see the house again,” says Mary Kay. “I had fallen in love with it the first time.”
As if navigating the purchase of the 24,000-square-foot house, which was sold through a trust, and interviewing contractors to complete the massive renovation weren’t complicated enough, three weeks before the May 10, 2002, closing, a fire broke out in the south part of the house, knocking out windows and blackening walls.
“That added one more layer of complications to the renovation,” says Chuck. Even a year and a half later, a faint hint of smoke still lingers in the formal living room.
Several days after closing on the house, Chuck and Mary Kay booked a band and invited 175 people to Cedarwood for a renovation kickoff party during Preakness Weekend. At the time, the couple figured they had seven to eight months of work ahead. Their move-in date was Jan. 1, 2003— plenty of time to settle in before their wedding on May 10, 2003.
As it turned out, renovations, which included replacing the heating system and installing a cooling system, installing a top-of-the-line modern kitchen, and overhauling the interior design, took longer than expected. In January 2003, the couple moved into the carriage house on the property and ramped up the pace on the main house, gunning to finish in time for their May wedding.
“We put our foot on the gas and had 50 to 60 people working seven days a week on the house,” says Chuck.
The first major hurdle was removing asbestos and hauling away trash from the basement— including 16 tons of coal Duncan had stockpiled in the event heating oil became scarce during World War II. While sorting through stuff left in the house, Chuck discovered the original plans for both the house and lawn. Based on those plans, landscaper The Growing Collection was able to begin restoring much of the grounds to their original design, which was created by Olmsted protégé Thomas Sears.
Once the debris was cleared, the couple and interior designer Alexander Baer tackled the decorating. Baer, coincidentally, had been one of roughly 30 designers who worked on the house as part of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s first Decorators’ Show House in 1977. The room he’d decorated, like many in the house, still looked as it had during its showhouse days.
Together with Baer, the couple set about returning Cedarwood to its original grandeur while modernizing it at the same time. “We didn’t do any structural renovations— except in the kitchen— because we knew we couldn’t improve on the original,” says Chuck. “We just wanted to make it comfortable and livable and functional. Trying to retrofit a 1927 house into a ‘smart house’ was daunting.”
By the time the renovation was complete, every room in the house was wired for audio, cable and digital satellite, and lighting and temperature controls were centralized in several control pads. These modern conveniences are hidden, so as not to threaten the home’s period look. The 21st-century air-conditioning vent in the breakfast room, for instance, looks similar to the 1920s heating grate. The powder room in the library was installed in the silver safe, and a wine cellar was installed in the servants’ dressing area. Several of the many bedrooms were transformed into sitting rooms and offices.
A massive Waterford chandelier, original to the house, greets visitors at the door, and the elegant reception hall waits just beyond. The formal living room, decorated in a palette of cool whites, overlooks a restored fountain on the south lawn. Throughout the house, woodwork and plaster molding have been lovingly restored, complemented by the addition of the couple’s paintings.
Upstairs, on the south side of the second floor, the master bathroom features the original sink and vanity designed by “fixture maker to the stars” Sheryl Wagner. The bathroom floor, like many on the second floor, features the original handmade Italian glazed terra-cotta tiles.
The north side of the second floor contains a guest suite plus two guest bedrooms— which would have housed some of the 14 servants who once ran the mansion. The third floor features a large ballroom, which the Nabits use as a TV and cigar room.
In the basement, the couple has installed a fitness room in the former his/hers dressing rooms. Just beyond, they’re installing a retractable glass atrium above the indoor pool. Though the pool wasn’t ready for a wedding night dip, everything else was in place by May 10, 2003.
That evening, Chuck and Mary Kay stood in front of the lion’s head sculpture on the garden wall and spoke their vows. Afterward, there were cocktails in the garden and dinner and dancing to the music of Little Feat under a tent on the tennis court.
It was a grand party, befitting a grand old house.
RESOURCES
Construction manager, Arnie Wallenstein, Lutherville, 410-356-6781
Interior design, Alexander Baer Assoc., Baltimore, 410-727-4100
Landscaping, The Growing Collection, Lutherville, 410-560-0775
Smart House features, Starr Systems, Baltimore, 410-494-4310
Kitchen design, Trish Houck, Kitchen Concepts, 410-461-3510
Lighting, Jones Lighting Specialists, Towson, 410-828-1010
Rugs, Alex Cooper, Towson, 410-828-4838
