Massachusetts home linked to famous Lipton tea company lists for $6.79 million

Some broken old tea chests are on the market for a paltry under $7 million.

Now that might seem “steep” no matter how important the tea is – but those crates go inside a beautiful Victorian waterfront estate that features picturesque views over a historic Massachusetts harbor.

The words tea, port and Massachusetts conjure up Boston’s tumultuous history with the humble cup. This home, whose listing news was first reported by Barron’s, is located at 405 Ocean Ave. in Marblehead, a seaside town about 16 miles from Boston.

It has an asking price of $6.79 million and sits on Marblehead Neck with views of the ocean on one side and Marblehead Harbor on the other. This is the very harbor where the US Continental Navy was formed in the fall of 1775 by order of General George Washington, about two years after the famous tea party in Boston Harbor – otherwise known as the Boston Tea Party – was thrown by disgruntled merchants. led by Sam Adams. , an act that sent Boston to the brink of revolution.

However, this listing’s tea party is a bit more recent and less dramatic than Boston Harbor’s. The house was built in 1880 by William Gardner Barker and eventually passed to W. Gardner Barker, longtime head of the Lipton Tea Company. The Barker family sold it about 100 years later, in 1990.

“That was the end of the Barkers and Lipton connection,” listing agent Liz Walters, of Coldwell Banker Realty in Marblehead, told The Post.

Well, not quite. Lipton’s legacy lives on in the home’s basement den, which has wood-paneled walls that have been sparingly and even whimsically fashioned from tea crates.

“W. Gardner Barker had them mounted on the walls of that room,” Walters said. “When the house was sold, the new owner removed them, but the current owner reinstalled them after he bought the property in 2014.”

The wood of the tea chest is embossed with writing and emblems, possibly marking the countries of origin and tea merchants with whom Lipton had business dealings.

“It’s an interesting decorative touch that honors the Lipton connection,” Walters said. “The one that catches my eye has some kind of bird on it. I wonder if this is the emblem of one of the tea companies. There is another one that actually has a tea company name. One can spend some time and do some research on them and see where they came from,” Walters added. “They’re very cool.”

Originally, this property was a massive four-lot parcel, but two were sold in the 1990s. That still left this home on two lots totaling 1.82 acres.

Inside this spacious 6,500-square-foot residence, modern amenities are paired with antique embellishments.

“It’s the perfect mix of old and new really,” Walters said. “You have a galley kitchen with new plumbing and granite countertops, but there are two wonderfully preserved original pantries.”

The residence now has five bedrooms and six bathrooms, including the second-floor master suite, which also has a sitting room.

“When you walk into the master suite, you see the ocean from the windows,” Walters said.

There is also a bedroom suite on the third floor and a guest suite on the lower level, the bathroom of which has a steam shower.

“It was important to the owner to have a nice bathroom for guests when they came to stay,” Walters added.

Surprisingly, those tea crates may not be the most attention-grabbing decorative feature on the wall, because a large mural adorns the first-floor hallway.

“It says 1972 and it looks like Salem Harbor. The Barkers had connections to Salem,” said Walters of the neighboring town, better known for its murderous witch trials. Indeed, founding owner William Gardner Baker used 405 Ocean as his cool summer residence while his main residence was in Salem.

A large wraparound porch connects the house to the terraced land cut from the solid rock “ledge.” An easement leads to a small beach and a network of small stone steps, which likely date from the early 1900s and the original Mr. Barker’s property, which guides through the basics. One leads to a grassy place; another group goes to what were once perennial gardens. Meanwhile, another set leads to a harbor overlook, where a small herpe-tailed summerhouse offers sweeping views of Marblehead Rock, Children’s Island, Castle Rock Park, and Marblehead Lighthouse.

A sign in the simple hut reads “Tea House”.

“It’s very small, with only one seat, and it has these big heavy wooden windows that you have to lift to open to let the wind in,” Walters said. “It will always be called the Little Tea House; all the owners have always called it that.”