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Beauty in Every Season

Summer in the back yardBack Yard in Summer

Fall: these are views of front and back yards from the two different verandas upstairsIMGP3790IMGP3816

Winter: The back patioIMG_7125IMG_6289

Aunt Molly Road on a quiet winter day. No traffic here!IMG_8895Aunt Molly Road on a winter day. Mount Rose Farm.

IMG_1179IMG_1205Our driveway and view from front of house IMG_1247

Back yard from office veranda (prior to lattice makeover)IMGP3792Aunt Molly Road in early March.  Always quiet here!IMG_1682

The creek a few steps off Aunt Molly RoadIMG_1689

The PRESERVE:   St. Michael’s is a 350 acre preserve and part of D&R Greenway protected acres in New Jersey.  This is one of the most desirable aspects of living on Aunt Molly. This photo was taken while on an evening, full moon run through the preserve.

IMG_0069IMG_0070Two minute drive (or just walk) to snow shoeing or cross country skiing in winterIMG_4247IMG_3663

Meet our neighbors

There aren’t many homes on Aunt Molly but there are quite a few animals. Facompré Horse Boarding Farm is to the rear of our property. It’s a beautiful property with a home, horse barn and training area owned by very nice people.  Another small farm with the two cows shown below is just down the street, and McConaughy’s sheep and cows graze on leased land on St. Michael’s Farm Preserve just five minutes down the road. The Von Oehsen’s have the emus shown below, a few chickens and now and then we see cows outside the barn near their gentleman’s farm.  In the bottom right photo, a rider on a horse is enjoying a quiet stroll down Aunt Molly Road. Are they worried about traffic? Nope.

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Hello neighbors!
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Morning mist on McConaughy’s sheep!

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Emus live on Aunt Molly!
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Horse and rider out for a stroll

These bucolic optics are juxtaposed with one of the largest and most elegant estates in Mercer County tucked into 50 acres on Aunt Molly Road, and other well-hidden gorgeous homes.  Mount Rose Farm is at the top of the road and the owner has made wonderful improvements to an already gorgeous property.  Photos of his barn are on the blog post entitled Beauty in Every Season

Falling in Love With Hopewell

When we moved here from Seattle, we had never heard of Hopewell and were only looking at properties in Princeton.  We looked for several discouraging months not finding anything in neighborhood we wanted or saw too many homes that needed a lot of work.  We decided to rent until we found the house that we thought would make us happy.   By chance, we were told about a house that was not on the market but that the owners were thinking about selling.  There was one problem for us.  It was in Hopewell, a place we had never considered.  I went to see it on a freezing, snowy, grey, winter day.  No leaves on the trees, no blooms, no green, and no idea what Aunt Molly Road or Hopewell was all about. I found it surprising that it only took seven minutes to get here from my kids’ school in Princeton. In fact one street away is the Princeton border.  And more than a mile further past this house going  toward Hopewell and Pennington, the address is actually Princeton for a couple neighborhoods.   Besides the proximity, we learned that Hopewell had many other assets having nothing to do with Princeton, that secured our desire to live here.  We made an offer within days and have loved every day in this house, the neighborhood and the township of Hopewell!  Every time I mention living on Aunt Molly, the response is always the same — “You’re so lucky; that’s my favorite road in the area!”

A BIT ABOUT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT

Hopewell Valley Central High School

 There are fractions of differences in the top five schools in Mercer County, but the fourth ranking public high school in Mercer County is Hopewell Valley Central High School situated in Pennington. The school serves students from Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township and Pennington Borough. The school has an enrollment of 1,152 students and a student to teacher ratio of 14:1. It is a high achieving school with consistently good results in national examinations. In recent Advanced Placement exams, 89 percent of those that sat AP exams received a 3 or better (out of 5). Students are offered a comprehensive, broad and diversified curriculum that best prepares them for either college or a career after graduation. The school also has a well-renowned music and performing arts department, with the school’s music program being placed in the top 100 Communities for Music Education in America.  READ MORE

 

Hopewell has also become a destination town because of its popular restaurants and relatively new businesses and eating/shopping establishments like Brick Farm Market, Brick Tavern and Da’s Thai. There are also favorites like Nomad Brick Oven Pizza, Antimo’s (the best Italian food anywhere, with pasta made on site), Peasant Grill, Blue Bottle, Hopewell Bistro, Brothers Moon, and Boro Bean for coffee and delicious breakfast and lunch offerings.  Sourland Cycles, Amy Karyn Design, Twine, and other shopping destinations like the Tomato Factory and Umbrella Home Decor bring folks from Philadelphia, Bucks County, and NYC to browse the highly cultivated offerings from antiques to bespoke tile to curated honey and salsas. Services like dry cleaning, laundry, hair and nail spas, massage, auto body, grocery and deli, churches, art galleries, public and private golf courses, indoor tennis courts, contracting, kitchen design and fitness studios are all within minutes, even walking or biking distance of this home.

More on the local nature trails and 350 acres of D&R Greenway protected land on Aunt Molly Rd. in next post.

Death of McMansions

I remember when it was still cool to buy an enormous home with four or five garage bays, flowing, Tara-style staircases, cavernous living rooms large enough to put a normal sized house in, and huge master bed/bath suites.  A former owner states, “As I remember it, we used three rooms 90 percent of the time and the other ten or twelve rooms ten percent of the time if we tried to find a reason.  I was in my thirties and living there the odd effect of making me feel like a real grown up but ostentatious at the same time. As pretty as it was, the scale wasn’t necessary and the extravagance felt too conspicuous every time I drove up to it. It was just the trend of living large and actually a waste of space, materials, and energy resources like oil, gas and water.”

That said,  I am in love with the glamour of the Guilded Age.  I’ll forever be awed by the lifestyle, staggering elegance and true craftsmanship of the mansions of that era and I appreciate when they’re well tended by new generations stewarding their ownership as homes, museums, or public spaces.  I imagine how dreamy it would have been living in “Rosecliff” or “The Breakers” high on bluff overlooking the ocean in Newport, RI.  If it were only the late 19th century!

Rosecliff

Early into the new millenium, a new breed of faux mansions in overly developed subdivisions popped up everywhere and a certain exclusivity was lost.

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The price points were favorable to a wide audience of buyers and many of them were built quickly with inferior construction and cookie-cutter lack of imagination.   All over the country we’re seeing prices for McMansions in developments dropping lower than prices on smaller homes in more desirable locations, and worse, they’re sitting on the market for years.

“We continue to move away from the McMansion chapter of residential design, with more demand for practicality throughout the home,” writes Kermit Baker, chief economist at the American Institute of Architects. “There has been a drop-off in the popularity of upscale property enhancements such as formal landscaping, decorative water features, tennis courts and gazebos.”  article from Feb 2016

27 Aunt Molly was designed giving careful attention to how a family actually uses a house combined with a desire to make it comfortable yet luxe through the use high quality materials and a dialed sense of style. It wouldn’t be considered small but there is no wasted space.  There are no staged, soaring, ‘untouchable’ rooms but it is large and airy, it’s comfortable for kids, pets and guests and the open flow is great for entertaining.