Hotel owner bids $710,000 to win historic Chesco mansion
A 19th-century mansion steeped in Chester County history and squeezed by development was won at auction Thursday by a Princeton businessman who said he will restore the house and build a hotel next to it.
A 19th-century mansion steeped in Chester County history and squeezed by development was won at auction Thursday by a Princeton businessman who said he will restore the house and build a hotel next to it.
C.Z. Patel, 70, who has developed and managed hotels in New Jersey and other states, paid $710,000 for Loch Aerie, a Swiss-Gothic showpiece built by shirt-collar magnate William Lockwood in 1868. The opening big was $250,000.
About 150 people showed up for the 20-minute auction held inside the manor, which sits on a hillock along Route 30 near Route 202 in East Whiteland Township.
Patel said he isn't sure how he will use the house, but the hotel will be a "higher quality" than the Comfort Suites and Best Westerns he owns elsewhere.
Preservationists have worried about the fate of Loch Aerie, designed by renowned architect Addison Hutton. Graced with sloping triangular roofs, arch-shaped windows, and the charm of The Addams Family homestead, it stands out on its two-acre plot next to a Home Depot.
Historians have called Loch Aerie a regionally significant house that could easily qualify for the National Register of Historic Places.
The mansion's most recent owner has been the family of Daniel Tabas, who bought it in 1967. He and his brother, Charles, owned extensive real estate holdings in the region including Mickey Rooney's Tabas Hotel in Downingtown, Twelve Caesars banquet hall on City Avenue, and the Riverfront Restaurant & Dinner Theater in Philadelphia. Daniel Tabas died in 2003.
Originally, Loch Aerie was the home of Lockwood and his children. In the 1970s, a Warlocks motorcycle gang lived there for several months. During their stay, a fire destroyed part of the house, and the group exchanged gunfire inside the mansion with rival Pagans.
Architectural consultant Anthony Alden then lived there for more than 20 years and restored it before moving out in the mid-2000s.
With the exception of a caretaker, the house had been vacant in recent years.
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