Monmouth Hills home listed for $2.5 million, built 115 years ago for an Army general
David M. Zimmer, NorthJersey.com
4 min read
A summer retreat built for a high-ranking U.S. Army retiree is a rarity in the historic Monmouth Hills.
Set on a one-acre hillside lot, the Tudor-style home was built nearly 115 years ago in the exclusive neighborhood then known as Water Witch Park. The community stocked with single-style homes was established in the late 19th century by a collection of New York businessmen and architects who found the spot ideal for a private summer club, according to municipal records complied by community historian Mary Joe Kenny.
Homes in the Historic District of Monmouth Hills "very rarely come on the market," Allison Maguire, the listing agent with Brown Harris Stevens.
A summer home built in about 1909, 13 Serpentine Dr. in Middletown was the home of Brigadier General Charles W. Raymond. A longtime member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Raymond first served as an aide-de-camp during the Civil War.
The home at 13 Serpentine was built on its one-acre hillside lot as a retirement getaway for Brigadier General Charles W. Raymond, who lived in Washington, D.C. in his later years. A civil engineer for the U.S. Army who got his start during the Civil War, Raymond helped shape the seaboard that his former home overlooks.
Recently listed for about $2.5 million, it has six bedrooms, five bathrooms. It is close to sandy beaches and Hartshone Woods Park. Its second-floor balcony offers a clear view of Sandy Hook and New York City. The latter is about 40 minutes away on the nearby Seastreak Ferry, said Allison Maguire, the listing agent with Brown Harris Stevens.
A total of 40 cottages were built within the original Water Witch Park, according to Kenny. Raymond's home was one of the last. It dates to about 1909.
Unusual for the neighborhood stocked with shingle-style homes, 13 Serpentine Dr. in Middletown was built in the Tudor Revival style and coated in stucco roughly the color of the crushed peanut-stone roads that wind through the private community.
A summer home built in about 1909, 13 Serpentine Dr. in Middletown was the home of Brigadier General Charles W. Raymond. A longtime member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Raymond first served as an aide-de-camp during the Civil War.
Records show the home's design was influenced by Edwin Lutyens, an English architect who planned most of New Delhi. It has exposed brick, archways and high ceilings. It is topped with a steeply pitched and gabled roof that was fully restored in 1999, Maguire said. It has also been modernized, with a 21st-century kitchen and central air conditioning.
Only about half of Water Witch Park's original 40 summer homes still exist. Raymond's home barely made it past infancy. A December 1912 fire claimed the neighboring home of New York businessman Augustus Linden and scorched 13 Serpentine Dr., according to a report in the Long Branch Daily Record. The heat shattered windows in Raymond's home before firefighters from Navesink extinguished the blaze. Also scorched was 12 Serpentine Dr., the shingle-style home of New York architect Frederick P. Hill.
After designing and building his home in 1901, Hill in 1904 penned the park club's casino. Expanded in 1911, by Lyman A. Ford, the casino still stands as the community clubhouse and a special event venue. The park was conceived in 1895 by real estate mogul Ferdinand Fish, who previously helped develop Highland Beach and Navesink Beach.
A summer home built in about 1909, 13 Serpentine Dr. in Middletown was the home of Brigadier General Charles W. Raymond. A longtime member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Raymond first served as an aide-de-camp during the Civil War.
Raymond in 1909 bought land in Water Witch Park from John B. MacArthur, who acquired four lots in 1900, according to newspaper reports. At that time, Raymond was 58 and still on active duty with the U.S. Army.
Born in Connecticut in 1842, Raymond was raised in New York City. There, he attended the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute prior to his July 1861 arrival at the United States Military Academy. Before graduating, Raymond was thrust into duty as an aide-de-camp to Union Army Major General Darius N. Couch during the Gettysburg campaign of the Civil War. Raymond would go on to graduate from West Point at the top of his class.
As a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers, he became a trailblazer. Selected to map the Yukon River Valley following the 1867 Alaska Purchase, he went into territory then uncharted by Americans and evicted the Canadians from Fort Yukon.
A summer home built in about 1909, 13 Serpentine Dr. in Middletown was the home of Brigadier General Charles W. Raymond. A longtime member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Raymond first served as an aide-de-camp during the Civil War.
Raymond spent most of the 1870s as an instructor at West Point. Through the 1880s, he worked in supervising roles for the Corps of Engineers and helped oversee the dredging of Boston Harbor.
Raymond's 1890 promotion to leading Corps operations in Philadelphia and the Delaware River put him in charge of reshaping the mouth of the river to make it safer for ships prone to damage from shoaling. Raymond in 1902 would join the Pennsylvania Railroad's Board of Engineers and run the company's New York Tunnel Extension projects. For the next two years and before retiring from military service in June 1904, he also supervised the Corps northeast New Jersey operations.
