The Montecito home of George Owen Knapp—who also built Knapp’s Castle off E. Camino Cielo—is being offered for $5.35 million. At one acre, 833 Knapp Drive is but a crumb of the original 70-acre estate known as Arcady. Still, the 1905 Italianate house provides a glimpse of how life used to be.
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Bedrooms: Four.
Bathrooms: Three and a half.
Size/Acreage: 5,548 square feet / 1 acre.
Price: $5.35 million.
Last sold: May 2002 for $3.215 million. In 2011, it was briefly listed for $6.95 million, then for $5.995 million six months later.
Listing agents: Anderson Hurst Associates and Joyce Enright of Berkshire Hathaway.
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The common areas have the kind of proportions you only find in old houses: the living room is 39 feet by 23 feet, with 20-foot-high ceilings; the dining room is 25 feet by 23 feet.
There are two staircases at one end of the living room. One leads to a loft (pictured directly below) that once held a pipe organ. From the Independent: “Longtime locals tell stories of myriad parties held at the villa, including organ recitals with trees outside swaying in time to the music, courtesy of carefully orchestrated fans.” Knapp died in 1945 so either locals are really old or it was a subsequent owner who showed off his powerful organ, so to speak. The second staircase goes to the basement—handy for accessing the wine cellar, but awkward from a design perspective.
The kitchen and bathrooms want to be redone, but the bedrooms might not need more than new paint and carpet.
The listing includes renderings of what various rooms would look like painted white. I’m not convinced that’s the answer—or the best thing for the beautiful woodwork.
The loggia running alongside the living and dining rooms is impressive.
There’s also a guest house and pool.
The listing has many more photos, but if you want to see the drive-in basement, you’ll have to contact Anderson Hurst Associates and Joyce Enright of Berkshire Hathaway for a showing. Be sure to tell them Siteline sent you.
For personal safety and security reasons, can you please remove all of the photos of our house from this public website? We asked the original listing brokers to remove all images two years ago, but we did not know these were still publicly available on your website.
Please email [email protected] and let me know which house is yours.
I got to see a bit of this half of the Knapp mansion on a site visit with my husband. The neighboring house which aligns perfectly with this one is the other half of the original mansion (the building was subdivided). The 74′ storage area is actually the access way for the horse drawn carriages to drive under the house to deliver food and supplies.