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Jul 21, 2023

On the Market: Italianate Rydal Center

Built in 1911 and part of a prestigious school for girls, this house has been renovated and updated in finest center-hall Colonial style, only with a lighter color palette. This stately house at 1539

Built in 1911 and part of a prestigious school for girls, this house has been renovated and updated in finest center-hall Colonial style, only with a lighter color palette.

This stately house at 1539 Hampton Rd., Rydal, PA 19046 could easily be confused for the estate home of a vineyard in Tuscany. Inside, though, is a true center-hall Colonial with a history linked to a legendary, long-gone school for girls that sat on its property and ultimately became Penn State Abington. / Photographs by Dan McKinney via BHHS Fox & Roach Realtors

The handsome house you see above may look like it came from Italy, but on the inside, it’s a center-hall Colonial through and through.

It hasn’t always been a center-hall Colonial house, however. This Rydal center-hall Colonial house for sale was built in 1911 and became part of the third home of The Ogontz School for Young Ladies.

The school, founded in 1850 as the Chestnut Street Female Seminary in the city, had outgrown the Jay Cooke estate in Elkins Park, which it made its home in 1883. So the school commissioned Horace Trumbauer, the architect who designed such Gilded Age mansions as Lynnewood Hall and would become one of the country’s most praised architects after his death in 1938, to create a new, bigger home for it in 1916.

The school was expanded over the years, with both outbuildings and additions to the main building in the 1920s. When the school closed in 1950, its principal, Abby Sutherland, donated its campus to Penn State, which turned the property into a center known as Penn State Ogontz. The two-year Ogontz feeder campus later expanded into a four-year satellite campus, renamed Penn State Abington in 1995.

Judging from the photos available on the Penn State website devoted to the Ogontz School, the building you see above was not the school building itself; that building looked more like an actual school, and for all I know, Penn State owns it still. There’s an outside chance that this house might have been “Shangarry,” the estate located next to the 54-acre site Sutherland purchased for the Ogontz School. Sutherland used Shangarry to house a lower school known as The Rydal School from 1917 through 1923.

It’s also not clear to me whether Penn State still owned this property when it was sold in 2014 after a three-year effort. By that time, the land around this estate house had definitely been subdivided, and the Penn State Abington campus sits about a third of a mile to the south of here. But regardless of who owned it in 2014, the two owners since then have taken good care of this place.

Most likely, it was the first of the two owners who renovated this house, as its current owner bought it only at the end of 2022. But that owner did a great job of updating and brightening it while keeping its original character intact.

Foyer

You enter this house via a doorway located under the main staircase. That leads to a roomy foyer, the unifying element of a main floor designed for both elegant living and effortless entertaining. French doors at its rear lead to equally elegant landscaped grounds.

Living room

Living room, rear

To the right of the foyer is the living room.

Sunroom

It shares its fireplace chimney with the fireplace (not shown here) in the adjoining sunroom. Latticework around its arched windows invites adornment with climbing vines that could turn this room into an indoor garden.

Study/home office

Immediately to the left as you enter is this study that can function as a home office or den.

Dining room

The formal dining room sits just beyond the study. It also has a fireplace. A full-height bay window at its far end holds a seating nook.

Kitchen

French doors on one side of the dining room fireplace lead to the rear terrace. A doorway to the left leads to a totally up-to-date kitchen.

Kitchen

The kitchen contains high-end appliances that include a shallow-depth refrigerator and companion freezer. It also has a double wall oven in addition to the large-capacity one in its six-burner gas range, which means you can prepare a large repast with no problem.

Family room

Beyond the kitchen is a sunny family room with a wet bar. A powder room sits off the family room and another is located next to the front door.

Primary bedroom

The second floor contains five bedrooms and four bathrooms. The primary suite includes a spacious bedroom with a Juliet balcony overlooking the backyard and a large walk-in closet.

Primary bathroom

Primary bathroom

Its bathroom includes a whirlpool tub and a separate shower stall.

Screening room

You will also find this screening room on the second floor.

Home office

The third floor contains several rooms that could serve many different functions, including this one that can serve as a home office.

Family room entrance

A detached four-car garage across the driveway from the family room also has guest quarters attached.

Rear elevation

Rear terraces

The rear yard includes a series of landscaped terraces leading down to a swimming pool.

Patio and shed

Off to one side is a small cabana-like shed and a patio with a grill for outdoor dining.

If you have connections to Penn State Abington, this Rydal center-hall Colonial house for sale is ideally situated just up Hampton Road from its campus. Shops, eateries and services line nearby Old York Road. Rydal station on the West Trenton Regional Rail line is just a little further away, on the far side of the Penn State campus.

So, while this house has not been certified historic, at least not yet, it has a long and distinguished history behind it.

THE FINE PRINT

BEDS: 6

BATHS: 4 full, 2 half

SQUARE FEET: 6,174

SALE PRICE: $1,700,000

1539 Hampton Rd., Rydal, PA 19046 [Matthew White | BHHS Fox & Roach Realtors]

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