4501 North Michigan Road and Christel DeHaan (Sotheby’s, Wikimedia)
A 42,000 square foot Indiana mansion modeled after an Italian Renaissance villa has gone on the market for $14 million – a record listing for the Hoosier state.
The estate, owned by late philanthropist and timeshare pioneer Christel DeHaan, is bordered by a private lake and surrounded by 152 acres on the grounds of a former Benedictine monastery, according to Mansion Global and real estate listings.
The Palladian-style house has 61 rooms, seven bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms and seven partial bathrooms, wrapped in a landscape of terraces, formal gardens and more than 100 imported trees.
The property at 4501 N. Michigan Road on the outskirts of Indianapolis also includes a sauna, indoor and outdoor pool, tennis court, over four fireplaces, spa and hot tub, elevator, fountains , patios, gardens, a billiard room and a garage for five more cars.
“Nowhere else in the city will you find an estate with such a commitment to design and aesthetics,” says the listing by Encore Sotheby’s International Realty.
The mansion is inspired by Villa la Rotonda in Italy, designed by Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, as well as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia, also in Palladian style.
It has two-story columns and symmetrical wings on each side, as well as a large entrance hall that can accommodate a hundred dinner guests. At either end of a loggia along the front of the house is a two-storey apartment which can be used for family and guests.
DeHaan, born in Germany during World War II, died last year at 77. The self-taught businesswoman immigrated to Indiana in 1962 and immediately started typing and ironing services.
In 1974, she and her then-husband Jon co-founded Resort Condominiums International, a timeshare exchange company, and ran it after he suffered a heart attack five years later. After their divorce in 1987, a court awarded him half of the company. She bought out half of her ex-husband for $67.5 million.
When it sold the global business in 1996 to NYSE-listed HFS, RCI had more than 4,000 employees.
Two years later, she founded Christel House International, an organization that provides educational and other resources to underprivileged children and their families. The proceeds of the sale will be used to constitute an endowment for the association.
[ Mansion Global, Sotheby’s] — Dana Barthelemy
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