Historic Hillsborough mansion sells after 70 percent price cut

16,000-square foot, 13-bed, 11-and-a-half-bath estate finally finds a buyer

By Adam Brinklow Jun 21, 2017, 8:26am PDT

It’s been a rough road for 891 Crystal Springs Road in Hillsborough, which secured a buyer long after going on the market for $100 million in 2013. The final price: Less than $30 million, a humbling experience for a home with a truly aristocratic history.

That is, of course, no mean amount of money in its own right; congratulations are in order for completing a long and difficult sale. Still, it’s hard not to remark on a more than 70 percent price cut since day one.

Built by the playboy son of a French count and a Gold Rush heiress in 1912 (or 1916, the accounts appear to vary), the same architects behind the St. Francis Hotel designed much of this 47-acre estate.

Back in 2014, we dubbed it “a doozy” and noted its “complicated history full of long-standing San Francisco social royalty, botched subdivision plans to cover divorce fees, and dreamy interior design.”

Given its history, the pedigree of its architecture, and the sheer enormity of the 16,000-square foot, 13-bed, 11-and-a-half-bath mega mansion, generational owner Christian de Guigne IV seemingly figured 100 large was a fair asking, even with the rider that the buyer allow the septuagenarian heir to stay on for the rest of his life.

But no takers emerged, and eventually came the price cuts—a flurry of price cuts in the end, some of them so large they could induce just as many gasps as the storied interiors.

The final price before it dipped off the market this year: $29.8 million, which SocketSite reports it’s closed escrow on now.