BARNARD — An estate that set a record for residential real estate sales is back on the market at a much higher price. Much, much higher.
Owner John Noffo Kahn paid $18.5 million for the property in 2008, then the most ever paid for a Vermont residence. He has since added 100 acres, bringing the Barnard parcel to around 400 acres, and completed construction of the central stone house and other improvements, including stables and a helipad.
The property went back on the market last summer for $39 million. If it sells anywhere near the asking price, it would set a new record.
Efforts to reach Kahn were unsuccessful. Christopher Lang, the Norwich-based real estate agent listing the property, did not return a message seeking comment.
In December 2008, Kahn told the Valley News that he had bought the Francis Road property as a quiet place away from his homes in Palm Beach and New York City.
“I was looking forward to a low-profile existence in which my wealth would not be what defined me to my neighbors,” he wrote in an email to the Valley News, adding, “thanks for bursting my bubble on Vermont!”
He told the Wall Street Journal last summer that he is selling Monsalvat, which takes its name from Richard Wagner’s opera “Parsifal,” because he wants to spend more time in New York, where he is best known as a patron of the arts.
In Vermont, “it’s been a much quieter life,” Kahn told the Journal.
He has also sold his home in Palm Beach. The price he’s asking reflects similar properties around the country and the demand for a place to hole up when conditions go south.
“Ever since the pandemic, people want an escape — they want a safe place to go,” Kahn told the Journal.
Lang is the principal broker and co-owner, with his wife, Carole, of Bravynia, a real estate company that specializes in “Secret Sanctuaries,” according to its website. “Hidden in Vermont are places few will ever see,” the homepage, bravynia.com, says. He also brokered the sale to Kahn in 2008.
“We introduce these exceptional properties to select buyers through a thoughtful, deliberate process,” the homepage continues. “Every introduction is purposeful — whether through private conversations or carefully chosen media — ensuring the path to ownership is as discreet and pleasant as the property itself.”
In addition to the Wall Street Journal, stories appeared last September in the Boston Globe and boston.com.
When Kahn purchased the property, it eclipsed a sales record of $8.4 million set in 2006 by a home in Ferrisburgh, Vt., on Lake Champlain. That home is currently on the market for $22.9 million, according to a Vermont Real Estate Co., listing. A message left for the broker was not returned.
The main house of Monsalvat took a decade to build and was incomplete when Kahn purchased it. Called “The Sanctuary,” in the online description, it is built of New Hampshire granite that was cut on site and roofed in Vermont slate. It features “massive stone buttresses” and is built around a 12-sided “cathedral great room.”
Construction of “The Sanctuary,” was begun by previous owners Herbert Hall McAdams III and his wife, Letty McAdams, residents of Dallas, Texas, who had purchased the property for $800,000 in 1999. They also built a massive stone bridge and a guest house, and won a court battle with the town to close a road through the property. Dallas-based architect Ralph L. Duesing won an award from his Texas peers for the home’s design.
In addition to the guest house, which is also built of stone, other structures on the site include an original 1800s farmhouse renovated into four units “ideal for staff and extra guests,” a pond-side gazebo built around a stone fireplace, an early barn and a newer four-stall stable and a stone “folly,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder.”
Kahn told the Wall Street Journal that he believes the $39 million asking price is reasonable because it would cost $50 million to replace the buildings on the site’s 400 acres.
Kahn is a member of the Annenberg family. Walter H. Annenberg headed the company that published TV Guide, the Daily Racing Form, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Seventeen magazine and served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1969 to 1974. Annenberg was Kahn’s great-uncle.