Levittown's mystery mansion may have buyer. Take a look inside the Lower Orchard home
The mysterious house at 79 Lower Orchard Drive in Levittown is enormous, opulent and unfinished.
Built to replace a fire-damaged Jubilee, the mansion has a stone turret, a winding grand staircase, eight bedrooms, framing for an elevator, and a picture window that's three stories high. It's 8,000 square feet — 11,000 if you add the basement — and an asking price of $575,000.
After sitting unfinished for years, the house went on the market in February, and appears to have a buyer. But mystery abounds.
The place, nestled in a wooded greenbelt on .29 acres, was never finished, its massive interior and soaring three-story first floor living space empty for years. Most of its wiring and plumbing are roughed in, but there are no walls, just studs. Other than its spectacular grand staircase (which a neighbor said “Looks like Titanic!”), the place is a shell.
An offer has been made to purchase the place for about $600,000, but who’s buying the mystery mansion remains a mystery, too. Listing agent Richard Webb declined to say.
Who owns the Lower Orchard mansion in Levittown?
Bucks County tax records show the original house on the property, a Levittown Jubilee of about 1,200 square feet, was purchased in November 1965 by Robert Gerard.
It changed ownership to Charlotte Gerard in January 2004, and then to Robert E. Gerard Jr. in February 2004.
Gerard Jr. built the mansion after a fire destroyed the original home.
Architectural renderings filed with Middletown Township's licenses and inspections office are dated May 21, 2006, and correspondence on file shows Gerard Jr. as owner. A long-time neighbor who knows Gerard said he worked as a nurse anesthetist. No one answered the door at an address for Gerard listed in the L&I documents, and a message left on voice mail to a personal number also listed in township filings was not returned.
He hasn't, however, owned the place in years.
Ownership changed again in June 2018, purchased for a fire sale price of $41,362 by First Patriots LLC, county records show. The company is headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but lists a mailing address at 7200 New Falls Road, Levittown, which is the Levittown Post Office, according to online searches.
It was purchased again for $306,000 in March 2022 by New Horizon Property Management, with an address on Veterans Highway/Route 413 in Levittown. It was listed for sale last month for $575,000, according to relator.com.
What's a mansion doing in a Levittown neighborhood?
Neighbors said they don't know. Mike Malloy, who has lived on Lower Orchard Drive since 1971, and has a view of the mansion from his yard, described the place as enigmatic as its builder.
“Bobby grew up over there, and the last time I saw him, maybe five years ago, he had a cane. He said he had injured himself in recreational rock climbing. Very nice guy ... My oldest is 51, and Bob was a couple years ahead of him in school ... The fire happened while he was at work, and the place was pretty much destroyed. He decided to rebuild.
“What I don’t know is why he built the house so big, and never finished it. Things seemed to come to a halt over there when the (Great Recession) hit in ’07, ’08. Then the property began to look shabby. Why it all stopped, I can’t say.”
So what's it like living next door to the Levittown mansion, which is often the subject of social media rumors and speculation online.
“Real quiet, since usually no one’s there,” said Melissa Andrusko, who lives next door to the looming house.
Its immense size is helpful when giving family and friends directions to her house, too.
“I say, ‘Once you hit the mansion, that’s us, we’re right next to it.’ You can’t miss it. Every car that passes here slows down to take a look at it,” she said.
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JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Levittown mansion is for sale in Lower Orchard
