Pinehurst NC Real Estate Blog

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For a golfer, living in a house overlooking the tee box on world-famous Pinehurst No. 2 is like eternal fan tasy camp. Except this house grandly named Holly Hill for its original plantings is more castle than camp. A castle renovated and enlarged to the specifications of Tom and Karen Linton, a fairytale-handsome couple who rule by electronics.

“Sit down … here,” Tom instructs as he manipulates a touch pad. Suddenly, Frank Sinatra flies in from the moon via a $100,000 sound system the most comprehensive available for residential installation. The crooner’s presence in the Lintons’ gathering room and throughout the house is positively spectacular.

But, then, so is everything else in this rebirth of a residence built on Jell-O.

In the early 1930s, Helen Rivas of New York, daughter of Jell-O patent-holder Orator Woodward, purchased the final lot to be developed along Midland Drive in the Pinehurst Historic District. Neighbors had already built impressive Colonial Revivals. Rivas’, although comparable, was but a modest prequel to its rebirth.

A plaque at the door confirms a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Notables who have lived at Holly Hill include British Ryder Cup team captain Arthur Lacey and his philanthropist wife, Mildred Lockwood; also a veterinarian who raised a res cued leopard kitten named Zara in the garage until grown and ready for a suitable habitat.

But who was Pam, a pet whose gravestone endures in the court yard?

Fast-forward to No. 2 during the 2005 U.S. Open. Linton and his associates at North American Packaging Corp. in Raleigh, where he was president-C.E.O, were socializing in the company tent. Wouldn’t it be nice to live right here? Tom thought. Slight problem: The Lintons had already purchased land and designed a home to be built at Forest Creek. Yet right in front of him stood an abandoned eyesore on Pinehurst’s center stage.

“Animals were living inside,” Karen recalls. “It looked awful.” The house was for sale. Like the house, Tom Linton (think Michael Douglas, only taller)

appears constructed of steel beams. Challenges have propelled him upward through several major industrial firms. Other arrangements were made at Forest Creek, enabling the Lintons to purchase Holly Hill with intent to “strip it down to the studs” and reshape the space to their needs.

The task was familiar. Tom and Karen, at that time living in Lake Forest, Ill. and Raleigh, had already built five homes and renovated two. Something about this property clicked: “It had character from the outside, sort of a New England look,” Tom says. Besides, he adds, “It’s a bit of Pinehurst history on the signature hole of a historic course.”

Built by a northerner, the house had another New England trade mark not common in the Sandhills: a basement.

Jim Secky, the residential designer who with Tom as general con tractor accomplished the two-year multi-million-dollar renovation, agrees. “There aren’t many older homes (in Pinehurst) with that sort of character. Most are very cottagey or craftsman-style.”

In 1962, a previous owner had built an east wing, which the Lintons reconstructed as a sunken living/family room (called the Pine Room for its painted paneling) with several conversation areas. “This was a poorly constructed addition. We opened it up with windows overlooking the golf course,” Secky says.

One bay will soon be filled with a Christmas tree.

Now the textured walls come alive with Karen’s abstract paintings in bold barn reds echoed by upholstery fabrics.

A plasma TV mounted over the mantel is dwarfed by sarcophagus speakers flanking the fireplace. More than 8,000 musical selections are at Tom’s fingertips.

“The other night we stayed up till 4 a.m. in here listing to music and drinking wine,” Karen admits.

Wine from a climate-controlled closet with glass doors and space for 1,000 bottles.

Over the Pine Room is the master suite. Master suites generally include a sitting alcove, spa bath and dressing room. In addition, the Lintons’ features a French balcony and a shoe room fitted with fur niture-quality shelving. Karen adores the coffee-maker nook in the bathroom wall. She painted koi swimming on a plywood floor in the luggage room.

Tom’s tastes are reflected in the furnishings. “I like traditional,” he says. “But we’re not big into antiques. There were none. I don’t come from a family who lived in mansions.” Karen recalls her parents buying the model home in a development, furniture and all.

Secky says more than 100 contractors worked on the house. Walls were torn down to install complex wiring and plumbing. Matching new materials to original, as in floorboards and the slate roof, was especially difficult. A marble floor in the bedroom had to be lifted. Several bathrooms were fitted with vessel sinks and sculpturesque faucets which rest on tables custom-made by Secky.

Pinehurst interior designer Susie Leader helped Karen select muted shades: soft teal, mustard yellow, forest green. Karen’s favorite room, her office, is a rich aubergine, the dining room a deep raspberry.

“I often choose deep colors for a dining room because they look so good by candlelight,” Leader explains. Dusty turquoise in the master bedroom provides a dramatic backdrop for massive furniture in dark woods. The color has become so popular with Leader’s clien tele that the paint dealer calls it Linton blue.

Much of the floor plan in the core was retained: hallways, mod erately sized foyers and bedrooms, servants’ quarters (now offices, guest and utility rooms), built-in dressers with cedar-lined drawers and, surprisingly for a house built in the 1930s, one bathroom per bedroom. But even Secky says he could have used a map to navi gate the rambling space.

The kitchen required major decisions. In an era when families ate at the club or had cooks, kitchens were utilitarian, nothing more. The Lintons inherited an ugly brick box attached during a previous occupancy. Away it went, replaced by a Tuscan extrava ganza with rustic stucco walls, tumbled stone floor and, soaring to 20 feet, a hand-painted cupola (with skylight) reminiscent of a Renaissance church illuminated by a chandelier of appropriate dimensions. Secky designed the kitchen around a 6-by-9 foot gran ite slab that forms the island.

In a house with many gathering areas, people still gather in this kitchen. Just the other night, Tom says, they made fresh pasta with guests here.

The Rivas’ dining room is now a music room dominated by a player grand piano. Across the main hall the former living room has been transformed into a banquet-sized dining room that accommo dates a table for 12 without crowding.

Throughout the house, back windows overlook the golf course; front windows face the courtyard with circular drive around a foun tain. The scene could be a Bentley commercial.

“IcallthisTheLink,”saysTom,crossingapassagewayjoiningthe core to a wing the Lintons constructed for entertainment, fitness and toys.

First, in a clubby green and plaid tavern with pool table and bar, the Lintons pay homage to golf. The Pinehurst Room displays golf art, a Putter Boy statuette, photos of Donald Ross, Ben Hogan and others, U.S. Open memorabilia and trophies won by son Ryan Linton, Illinois State High School Champion, member of the University of Southern California golf team and participant on the Hooters Tour. A door beside the bar opens into an oversize surgical ly clean garage with tool shop and yet another wall-mounted TV.

There’s the Bentley, and a Jag convertible, and a golf cart for zip ping over to the clubhouse to watch people come off the 18th hole.

“Tom likes his toys,” Karen smiles.

More of his, hers and their toys are located in a gymnasium over the garage where the Lintons work out daily on a dozen machines.

Karen’s studio adjoins the gym. Her careers have included teach ing dental hygienists and instructing surgeons in the use of staples made by U.S. Surgical. Now, inspired by the house, she paints. “It had so much wall space to fill,” she says.

Through the trees, golfers on No. 2 glimpse a screened Carolina room and a terrace with a tall, free-standing outdoor fireplace.

The total: nearly 11,000 square feet of unabashed (yet homey) opulence spread over three distinct sections. “This house has a warmth about it,” Karen notes. “It’s large but still cozy.” Tom enjoys the fine points: plaster walls, thick doors, beveled window glass and miles of double, triple and quadruple crown moldings. “New homes just don’t have the same character.”

Surely, in an undertaking of this magnitude, some mistakes were made, some details overlooked.

“Yes, but we fixed them as we went along,” Karen says.

From the exterior, three sections built over 70 years display unity: shingles melt into stonework, doors and windows original or new are siblings. The house, bookended by double English country door garages, curves gracefully around the courtyard. In the back a low stone wall separates gardens from green space and golf course.

“(Tom and Karen) have the ability to conceptualize what they want and the wherewithal to achieve it,” Secky says. “The building sort of tells you what to do with it and that’s what we did.”