If You Have a Spare $64 Million the Crespi Estate Can (Again) Be Yours!
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The Crespi Estate, one of the most prestigious properties in America, and the most significant estate in Dallas is, once again, for sale. But this time, three of the original Crespi Estate land parcels can go with it.
In 1938, Italian Count Pio Crespi and his wife Florence Crespi hired Swiss architect Maurice Fatio to build their dream home. Celebrities, royalty, and politicians have been hosted on the premises over the years, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Coco Chanel, Jimmy Stewart, and Ronald Reagan. It was, and remains, a one-of-a-kind estate.
Naturally, the estate has long caught the eyes of local billionaires. Tom and Cinda Hicks and Andy Beal have owned it.
Oh the women of the Crespi Estate. Cinda Hicks once said that when her husband bought the property, he walked up to the second story and looked across the expansive property. He bought every house he could see from that window. Andy Beal sold it because his wife didn’t particularly like it.
Merhdad Moayedi, CEO of Centurion American Development Group, bought the estate at auction in 2017, intending to develop what was then a 25.5-acre property surrounding the original Crespi estate. Moayedi parceled off about 10 acres at the front of the estate to build a luxury home community called, you guessed it, Crespi Estates.
The property has been owned since 2019 by representatives of the Charlee Lochridge Cox Dynasty Trust, which was founded by the Edwin L. Cox family.
You may recall Mr. Cox owned the beautiful Beaux Arts mansion that originally belonged to Rose Lloyd and was razed by Andy Beal last year. Dallas is a veritable merry-go-round of billionaire home trades, so it will be fun to see which one snags the Crespi Estate this time… unless they are coming from, say, Goldman Sachs, from up north?
During the lineage of the estate, three individual parcels were carved out from the back of the property so they could be easily marketed individually. They can be accessed via a separate gated entrance from Daria Dr. (And you know who lives on Daria Drive, right? Tell you in a sec.)
These three residential acres amount to an additional 3.74 acres, resulting in a total of 15.687 acres for the Crespi estate. Considering that a desire for privacy and security is at an all-time high for luxury buyers, having those parcels is quite a bonus. Of course, with former President of the United States George W. Bush hanging his Stetson next door, any buyer can be certain of state-of-the-art security.
The Crespi Estate has, of course, seen changes over the years, with the bulk of the expansion and updates done by Tom and Cinda Hicks. When they purchased the estate in 1997, they demolished homes fronting Walnut Hill to ensure an added layer of privacy and create a dramatic drive up to the house. They hired renowned architect Peter Marino and luxury home builder John Sebastian for the remodel and addition. It took 33 months, and at times, 250 people a day were working on the project.
The amount of craftsmanship that went into the Crespi Estate originally and during the remodel is incredible. Realtor Douglas Newby has documented many of these extensive updates on his website, with an incomparable amount of detail from the painters and the London-based garden designer. Publisher Candy Evans is the only local real estate reporter who has been inside the property.
Name it, and the property has it, from a lighted helipad landing covered with grass to maintain the aesthetic and a 1,500-foot well that waters the estate, to an entire floor devoted to one of the two theaters on the property.
The estate consists of the 27,092-square-foot main house with 10 bedrooms and 12.5 bathrooms, a three-story 4,800-square-foot entertainment pavilion with a 19-seat theater, a two-story 3,300-square-foot guest house, and an enormous greenhouse. If you can’t find it in the Crespi Estate, it probably does not exist.
At one point in its history, it was listed for a whopping $135 million, so at $64 million, you have quite a deal here. Of course, that $135 million threw in a few more acres. Don’t even look at the property taxes for this home on DCAD.
The Crespi Estate and privacy lots, at 5619 Walnut Hill Ln. is listed with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realtors Pogir Pogir and Diane DuVall .
Next up: how they got this listing!
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Wonder if Ken Fisher has an interest. Semi-recently (2 yrs ago), his company HQ moved to Plano. The man apparently loves trees and lumber, of which the property still has many, despite its semi-recently reduced acreage.
This has been sitting for a while now. I feel like it’s far less desirable after having 10 acres removed from the listing. The directly adjacent 10300 Gaywood Rd property has a bigger lot now (16 acres……although a large amount is artificial water features) and it’s not directly next to the loud tollway. If the owner of that property also obtained the Crespi estate and merged both properties into a mega property of 31 acres, then that might be a truly scarce legacy estate, albeit with an odd lot shape.
Brandon is right: the price goes up and the acreage goes down. It is unfortunate that the approach to the house is oblique since Moayedi determined to use the service drive as its new entrance (there’s a reason why service drives are service drives): you now have to drive by the garages before the house is even visible, and it’s the last thing you get to. The view from the house is now a problem, too, for any buyer: from the second floor you see the tops of “box houses” built over what used to be your front yard. Beal, of course, wrecked the kitchen, butler’s pantry and family room which now just don’t hang together, and he removed the original chinoiserie mirroring in the charming bar, now quite uncharming. And an Alhambra fountain in the stair hall! One hopes it’s staging. The property now is rather like the Venus de Milo with the arms removed. Besides raising the price enormously, the Coxes seem not to have abused it. Bless them, I guess. Price aside, the changes to the estate have moved it to an aesthetic category of sorts that those who can afford it will walk away from in preference for another property.
Brandon unfortunately you are right, this historical aristocrat family estate, once known for its royal ambiance, has lost its former splendour. Anyone familiar with the original design that understood the purpose of the layout would most likely have no interest in the property in its current form. The historical aristocrat family estate with royal ambiance was transformed into an overpriced home that compromises the privacy expected by any aristocrat family. It seems the current owners may not have appreciated the property’s historical significance and fail to preserve the historical value that could have made the crespi estate a highly valuable asset. At present its simply an old, overpriced house.