Morning Headlines: The Wall Street Journal Profiles Toll Brothers’ ‘Foxcatcher’ Project

The Carriage Barn at Liseter | Photo: Toll Bros.

The Philadelphia area has gotten a lot of national attention recently. Hot on the heels of the New York Times’ travel list and Conde Nast ranking Philly super-high in the global shopping sphere, The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the former site of John du Pont’s mansion at Foxcatcher Farms in Newtown Square–the place where du Pont murdered wrestler David Schultz and the setting for the movie ‘Foxcatcher’ starring Channing Tatum and Steve Carrell.

It’s also the site of the latest project from nearby Toll Brothers, who is transforming the over 200-acre site into their latest “luxury development” called Liseter. While they’ve already sold 123 of the upcoming 449 homes, The Wall Street Journal is paying particular attention to the restored carriage barn, the prior home to award-winning thoroughbreds:

A newly restored carriage barn, with a soaring foyer and large stone fireplace, is the centerpiece of a communal area that includes a fitness center, outdoor pool, tennis courts and a separate recreation center.

Toll Brothers originally planned to tear down the two silos on the barn, but designer Mary Cook, president of Mary Cook Associated in Chicago, made one into an entranceway and found creative ways to reuse original materials to transform the barn into a $4.5M club with a retractable wall providing views of the estate:

Old wooden partitions between horse stalls became wainscoting. A barn door became a sliding door to a conference room. A stone wall is now the backdrop to a lavish bar. An old tack trunk is now an end table. Ms. Cook discovered more than 1,000 ribbons from prizewinning horses and framed several hundred.

The story also states that Toll Brothers hasn’t “shied away” from the notorious past of the property and, in turn, that hasn’t kept buyers away, either.

• Du Pont Estate Remade With Luxury Homes [Wall Street Journal]

• Local Officials Anxiously Awaiting Word If DNC Is Coming To Philadelphia [CBS3/KYW]
• New apartment complex to rise near University of Delaware [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• Lower Gwynedd Board of Supervisors approves Spring House Village Shopping Center settlement agreement [Ambler Gazette]
• Permit hearing set for Kardon Park development plan [The Inquirer]
• Developer hoping to start first phase of Steeple View project in Newtown during first quarter of 2015 [Bucks Local News]