A Main Line estate once owned by a Campbell Soup heir is going to auction

A secluded Gladwyne estate built almost a century ago in grand Main Line style will be auctioned online — in its entirety or as two separate residential parcels.

Bidding starts at $2 million for Linden Hill Estate, 1543 Monk Rd., a 13.8-acre property with a 14,467-square-foot main house that contains eight bedrooms, eight full baths, and four half-baths — as well as a guesthouse.

The starting bid is $1.5 million for the 12.4-acre Linden Court at 1539 Monk Rd., with a four-bedroom, two full-bath primary home and a two-bedroom, two full-bath guesthouse, along with a 10-car garage and a woodworking shop.

The starting bid for the entire property is $3.5 million. Interluxe Auctions, a company specializing in high-end residential real estate, will conduct the auction May 20 and 21.

“It’s a magical place to live,” Interluxe Auctions vice president Stacy Kirk said from the company’s headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.

“The property has gardens, fields, woods, and the Mill Creek,” she said. “The central part of the main home is very grand, with huge rooms for entertaining. Two swimming pools and a tennis court are on the grounds.”

Some interior spaces in the estate’s main house have been updated, but the house retains original tile, metal, millwork, and carpentry, and also offers eight fireplaces and a walk-in, 300-bottle wine closet. Both properties feature “world-class architecture and [a] very private, parklike setting,” according to the Interluxe Auctions website.

Linden Hill was designed in the late 1920s in the signature, European country house style of Edmund Beaman Gilchrist. He worked for prominent Philadelphia architects Horace Trumbauer and Wilson Eyre Jr. before establishing his own firm, specializing in winter and summer homes for the city’s elite.

Best known as the longtime residence of John T. “Jack” Dorrance, whose father invented Campbell’s condensed soup, the property has been home to Bob and Susan Burch and their family for 35 years. It has been on and off the market since 2013 and listed for as much as $11.9 million as a single parcel.

“This is a beautiful, beautiful place where you’re surrounded by inspirational architecture,” said Bob Burch, a venture capitalist and lifelong Philly-area resident.

Noting that the architect was known for village-like assemblages of homes, Burch said, “you can see immediately that Gilchrist designed this. Brilliance was part of his process.”

At 69, and with the oldest of his and Susan’s five children on their own, ”it’s time for us to find something that’s a little bit smaller and a little more manageable” to live in, Burch said.

Christopher Leswing, director of building and planning for Lower Merion Township, described Burch and his family as “excellent stewards” of the property.

“In the 1980s and ‘90s, we saw some of the great estates that have been a defining feature of the township being partitioned and turned into residential developments or institutional uses,” Leswing said. “We wanted to keep them as part of the community, so the township approved ordinances forbidding demolition of properties that were designated Class 1 resources, and providing incentives for preserving them.”

» READ MORE: After almost a decade on the market, Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park has been sold — and saved

The Lower Merion Historical Society website includes a houses and estates chart of 158 noteworthy residential properties in the township — and lists more than 50 as having been demolished, including several in the last decade. But at least 90 were still standing in 2020, according to the website.

“We’ve been able to save some, but we have lost some as well,” Leswing said.

In 2019, Burch had sought to redevelop a portion of his property, proposing to build a village of 31 single-family luxury homes there. A later iteration of the proposal, which he had described as a tentative fallback position, would have involved development of a 170-bed care home on part of the property, which sparked opposition from neighborhood residents.

» READ MORE: A grand estate in Gladwyne will be redeveloped: A residential village or a 170-bed retirement home?

Burch subsequently subdivided Linden Hill into five parcels, including the estate, the court, and three others that have been sold as single-family residential lots. Four-hundred-foot setbacks will preserve the verdant Monk Road view shed, he said.

Burch said he is confident the auction of his two properties, separately or together, will be a success.

“The auction process will expose Linden Hill to a broader audience, and that’s a big plus,” he said. “We really hope we can [sell] to a family who appreciates it as much as we have.”

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