Built by a Wausau business titan, this historic estate is for sale. Here's the price tag.

WAUSAU - The estate takes up half a city block in a designated historic neighborhood, with a three-story red brick home designed in an eye-catching English-Spanish baroque style by a critically-acclaimed Milwaukee architect.

Since it was designed in the 1920s, the D.C. Everest House has been a crown jewel among central Wisconsin showpiece homes, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Built by power-broking businessman, paper industry innovator and the man after whom the Weston-based D.C. Everest Area School District is named, David Clark Everest, you can buy the estate for $799,000.

That's an eye-popping price for a typical piece of Wausau real estate, where the median price for homes sold is about $170,000, according to the website Realtor.com. But the Everest mansion at 1206 Highland Park Boulevard is anything but typical. And plunk the estate ‒ the 7,062-square-feet, six-bedroom, six-bath home sits on an over-sized lot of 1.1 acres ‒ a few hours away in an urban environment such as Milwaukee or Madison, you could easily be paying $1.5 to $2 million or more.

The home is a paradox. A Mediterranean-style villa with arched doorways, tiled roof and a courtyard that features a fountain and magnolia trees, it would seem to be a better fit in a warmer climate, maybe the southern European Riviera.

Yet, placed where it is, it fits. It's an anchor of a historic neighborhood renowned and valued for its diverse, high-quality architecture. Its neighborhood, the Highland Park Historic District, is part of the State Register of Historic Places, and the mansion is just a couple blocks away from another home on the National Register of Historic Places, one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The mansion's warm-weather design and look in snowy central Wisconsin is one of the many interesting juxtapositions the home and its owners have provided through the years.

"It's a big house," said Dr. Kevin Flaherty, who owns the house with his wife, Anne Flaherty, "but it doesn't feel big."

The design has a lot to do with why the home feels almost cozy. Although there are a few large and open rooms, most the home is split into wings that have smaller, snuggier rooms.

"We raised four kids in the house," Anne Flaherty said, laughing. "And you'd think that with such a spacious house, there would be room to get away from them for a little while. But no."

Historic architecture on display

The Flahertys have owned the estate since 1990, when they bought the property from Anne Flaherty's father, Lawrence Riordan.

Anne Flaherty was a sophomore in high school when her parents, Lawrence and Virginia Riordan, bought the home. Lawrence Riordan was the president of Crestline Windows, a window manufacturer located in the center of town.

The historic and architectural aspects of the home were lost on the teenaged Anne Flaherty, she said. She remembers being happy because she and siblings "all ended up with own separate rooms," she said. "We liked having that space. There was a rec room in the basement and we made a lot of use of that."

She remembers the parties after basketball games and other sporting events. "I was less interested in a house than what my friends were doing," Anne Flaherty said. "I wasn't particularly interested in the architecture."

David Clark Everest in the mid-1920s obviously was.

Everest, born in Pine Grove, Michigan, in 1883, moved to the Wausau area as a young man after being recruited to manage Marathon Paper Mills Co., a Rothchild pulp and paper production mill. It was a smart choice. Everest was an astute businessman with a canny ability to see the needs of the future.

While others thought newsprint would be the main product of the Rothschild paper mill, Everest saw a different, more lucrative path, according to a story about Everest that ran in the Wausau Daily Herald in October 2000, when Everest was inducted into the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame.

"He said there was one thing that everyone needed, and that's food, so they went into food packaging," D.C. Everest Jr. told the paper. "So they went into food packaging ‒ milk cartons, Waxtex, frozen food cartons. ... His foresight and vision was fantastic."

Soon, the elder Everest's business interests and investments expanded. He became involved with several banks and other financial institutions, Wausau Insurance Cos. and Masonite Co. He also supported the State Conservation Commission, the Marathon County Historical Society, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the American Forestry Association and co-founded Trees for Tomorrow.

"Work was his hobby ‒ it was absolutely his hobby and his first love," D.C. Everest Jr. said.

At the same time (paradox alert), the elder Everest was an outgoing and social person. "He used to tell me, 'If there is no other thing you do in life, know people and make friends,'" D.C. Everest Jr. said.

The mansion reflected that. While most rooms are small compared to today's standards, there is plenty of space in the home's lower level for a recreation room and bar. There are custom-made stained glass windows that portray a monk-looking Everest in bare feet, pajamas and a robe, playing cards. Another pane shows a friend, also sitting in pajamas, laying down his cards and crying. The business mogul of Wausau had a sense of humor.

It stands to reason that Everest would hire the best architect he could find to design his showcase east-side home. He chose Alexander Eschweiler, the founder of the Milwaukee Eschweiler & Eschweiler architectural firm that included his three sons. Eschweiler founded the firm in 1892, and it would go on to become one of the prolific firms in the city's history, according to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Encyclopedia of Milwaukee.

The firm designed homes, community spaces, places of worship, factories and industrial buildings. In Wausau, the Eschweiler firm designed other smaller, but upscale, homes the First Universalist Unitarian Church and the Wisconsin Valley Fair pavilion in Marathon Park.

RELATED: New mural salutes David Clark Everest

RELATED: They dreamed of owning a Frank Lloyd Wright home. Now they have one in Wausau.

'We miss ... living in that house'

Anne Flaherty, an attorney who became a stay-at-home mother, and Kevin Flaherty, an ophthalmologist and eye surgeon, bought the home for a lot of reasons. They were living in a smaller, nearby house, and the space the Everest house had appealed to them.

But they also wanted to keep the home in the family. Anne Flaherty's mother died unexpectedly, and her father was living in the house alone. He was starting to get offers on the property. The Flahertys decided that the time was right for them to move in.

The historic aspect of the house was important to them, but comfort and use were bigger draws.

As their children grew up, they used the home in much the same way Anne did; the Everest house became a social hub for kids and parents. As the children grew up, Anne and Kevin kept their outgoing social lifestyle, holding dinner parties and get-togethers. The home seemed tailor-made for outgoing people who enjoyed hosting gatherings.

"I would say that introverted people could totally enjoy the house," Anne Flaherty said. "But the house is made for entertaining, and we really did."

As they got older and the children moved out, Anne and Kevin found that the house, in a way, adapted to meet the differing lifestyle. They appreciated the finer, more refined aspects of the home, such as the artistic elements on the windows, the distinct tile floors and bright warmth of the sun room.

"We found that we could go in the sun room and have a glass of wine," Anne Flaherty said. "In later years, we put a little bistro table out in the courtyard where we could sit and have drink."

Anne and Kevin are now 65 and 67, and the home just became too big for them, they said, plus both have had to deal with bouts of cancer. They're in better health now, Kevin Flaherty said, but they spend their winters in Florida, and come to a cabin in Three Lakes in Wisconsin for the summers.

Although letting the house go is the right thing to do as they downsize and simplify, "there isn't a day that goes by that we don't miss living in that house," Anne said.

Features reporter Keith Uhlig is based in Wausau. Contact him at 715-845-0651 or kuhlig@gannett.com. Follow him at @UhligK on Twitter and Instagram or on Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: Historic D.C. Everest mansion in Wausau built in 1928 is up for sale