By E.B. Solomont
A 1920s estate built by a Macy's heir is coming to market in New Jersey for $10 million.
The roughly 20-acre estate in Middletown, N.J., was built by Herbert N. Straus, son of Macy's department store co-owner Isidor Straus, according to Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society. Known as Tower Hill Farm, the home was purchased in 1949 by James McConnell, who made a fortune in the heating and oil business and whose descendants still own the property.
About 40 miles south of Manhattan, the estate has roughly 21,600 square feet of living space. The property's nine structures include a clock tower, and the grounds contain a pool and tennis court.
Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida Straus, died in the sinking of the Titanic, Adler said. Their sons Percy and Herbert Straus each purchased 100 acres of land in Middletown, where they built adjacent country estates.
Herbert and his wife, Therese Straus, also owned a townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, which was later purchased by the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Around 1929, Herbert and Therese commissioned a French Norman-style château to replace an existing wood house on the Middletown property, as well as a new stable, dairy complex and cottages for the family's chauffeur, groom, stable manager and housekeeper. The project was so vast, Adler said, that the local train line was extended to bring in construction materials. But Herbert died in 1933, and while the outbuildings were completed, the château was never built.
In 1949, Therese subdivided the property and sold it at auction. McConnell paid $35,000 for a roughly 20-acre parcel, property records show. He moved his young family to the farm, where they kept racehorses. James' son Arthur "Bud" McConnell, and his wife, Kathy McConnell, then raised their four children on the property, said Lauren Mazzari, one of their daughters. Three of the four siblings were married at the farm, with parquet floors laid down in the garage for dancing.
Before James McConnell died in 1988, three generations of the McConnell family lived on the estate together, popping in and out of each other's homes, Mazzari said.
In the 1990s, Bud and Kathy converted the stables into a roughly 4,000-square-foot main residence with three bedrooms. By then they had several grandchildren, so they turned the former hay loft into a bunkroom with a fireman's pole and puppet theater. At Easter, the family would gather for puppet shows, and Bud would organize "epic" easter egg hunts, Mazzari recalled.
Kathy died in 2021 and Bud last year. Mazzari and her brother, Andrew McConnell, said they are sad to be selling, but the four siblings live in different parts of the country, making it impractical to keep the property. "It's not feasible anymore," Mazzari said.
Middletown is commutable to Manhattan by ferry, said listing agent Kelly Zaccaro of Heritage House Sotheby's International Realty. Housing stock there ranges from cottages near the beach to larger properties, including the rocker Jon Bon Jovi's riverfront estate. A house built on another part of the former Straus property sold for $3.1 million in 2024, records show.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 16:00 ET (20:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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