Historic mansion Tulip Hill on auction block

The property, the home of the county's well-heeled over the centuries, could be sold to the highest bidder April 10. Starting bid: $1.65 million.

"Tulip Hill is one of the finest 18th-century, five-part Georgian houses in the United States," Donna Ware wrote in "Anne Arundel's Legacy: The Historic Properties of Anne Arundel County," the go-to tome on the subject.

And now it is being sold by Citibank, which came to own it last summer after paying previous owner William Chaney roughly what he had paid for it in 2004.

Chaney, an inheritor of some of the Chaney Enterprises cement fortune and collector of historical properties, relics and documents, had a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure deal with the bank, according to the property's listing agent, Gary Gestson.

The bank acquired the property in June 2009, according to state real estate records.

Chaney had purchased the property in 2004 from previous owner Morgan Wayson for a reported $4 million. At the time Chaney was living at Terra Rubra, Francis Scott Key's boyhood home in Carroll County.

Wayson bought the property in 1992, modernized it and restored it to its former grandeur.

The property then included the mansion and roughly 92 acres in two parcels. The current sale includes only the 52 acres that come with the house.

Gestson said Chaney put the house on the market about two years ago for $7.5 million; it then included both parcels of land.

"It is just so sad," Gestson said. "It is such a magnificent property."

Gestson, who specializes in historic homes via Long and Foster Realtors, said the market for historic homes has been strong despite the condition of the rest of the real estate market.

Tulip Hill has been listed for $2.3 million since the fall.

"The bank determined that an auction was now the best venue to sell this property," he said.

The 6,488-square-foot mansion - with seven bedrooms, nine working fireplaces and plenty of bathrooms - has some of the finest architectural elements of their type and period.

On top of that, the winning bidder gets piers, 52 acres sloping down to Tenthouse Creek, and magnificent views of the West River and Galesville,

The home's builder, Samuel Galloway, was a prominent Quaker merchant and planter. His friends included George Washington, who is said to have frequently visited.

"You really can say Washington slept here," Gestson said.

Galloway began construction in 1756, a year after buying a tract known as Poplar Knowle.

He was the great-grandson of Richard Galloway who built nearby Cedar Park, the oldest part of which is the oldest surviving earthfast-built home in Maryland and Virginia.

Samuel Galloway and his wife, Anne Chew Galloway, renamed the property after the magnificent grove of tulip poplar trees on the site, then some 260 acres. Some of those trees still stand on the current property.

The home was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970, landing it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.