For sale: Lakewood mansion. Buyer will need about $3M and a certain aesthetic taste
Jonn Mason isn’t like other people. You can tell the moment you meet him.
Flashing a crooked grin and a mysterious, quizzical glint in his eye, Mason has a way of locking into conversations you probably weren’t prepared for. The subjects vary — from fine art to his futile attempt, decades ago, to convince his neighbors to construct a beach house he designed in the gated, waterfront community they share — but each topic is tackled with singular focus and attention. No distractions.
You realize all of this even before he invites you inside — at which point Mason’s quirks and idiosyncrasies begin to fall into place.
Since 1978, Mason, 74, has been the proud owner of Thornewood Carriage House, a century-old English Tudor affair in the shadow of Thornewood Castle on American Lake. When he purchased the roughly 7,000-square-foot, four-bedroom Lakewood home more than four decades ago for $200,000, it had been converted into a duplex, complete with popcorn ceilings. Its days as a working part of the Thornewood Castle estate — a 100-acre assemblage that was home to Chester Thorne, a prominent banker and one of the founders of the Port of Tacoma — were ancient history.
Today, Mason’s home is, quite literally, filled with ancient history. It’s also on the National Register of Historic Places. Restoring Thornewood Carriage House has consumed much of Mason’s life, at least as much as his career in financial management, which is how he made the money to pay for it all.
Step inside and the fruits of Mason’s labor are on full display, from the moment you set eyes on the spectacularly redone black-walnut entryway to the time you inevitably spend marveling at the gold impregnated sinks and the living room fireplace, which he salvaged from an 18th-century Italian castle.
Frankly, it’s all breathtakingly ornate, to the point of feeling fantastical. It’s hard to imagine anyone living there — let alone using the marble toilet — but that’s just what Mason has done, all alone, since his divorce in 1997.
The catch?
For a year now, Mason, who is looking to downsize in old age and move to the desert, has been trying to sell Thornewood Carriage House.
In a climate where local real estate brokers say even high-end luxury homes are moving fast — with most spending less than a month on the market before being sold — the challenge he’s had finding a buyer is yet another thing that makes Mason and the property he’s trying to sell one of a kind.
“I don’t look at myself as eccentric. But I do look at myself as striving to do things perfectly if it’s possible,” Mason said Tuesday under a ceiling like something out of a European palace, handmade by a Ukrainian craftsman he hired for the job.
“I mean, there’s a pig for every pen, right? There’s got to be somebody out there that has tastes like mine.”
‘One-in-a-thousand buyer’
Mike Larson has been in the local real estate game for nearly three decades. A managing broker at Compass real estate and formerly the designated broker at Allen Realtors, he’s no stranger to selling high-end homes in and around Lakewood.
Still, Larson — who took on the challenge of trying to sell Thornewood Carriage House last week with his colleague Amanda Shepherd — quickly acknowledged he’s never encountered anything quite like this.
Listed at $3.25 million, Thornewood Carriage House isn’t just the most expensive home Larson has ever attempted to sell, it’s by far the most unique.
“I guess I really didn’t understand how impressive it was until I actually got in,” Larson said. “I was familiar with the home, but I wasn’t intimately familiar with the ways that Jonn has made it very, very special.”
“Finding that literally one-in-a-thousand buyer who not only has the the ability to buy this but also the desire to buy it is not going to be an easy task,” Larson added. “That’s part of why I think Amanda and I took this on as a challenge.”
Larson and Shepherd won’t be the first to try. Roughly 17 years ago, Mason listed Thornewood Carriage House for $2 million, garnering a Sunday spread in The News Tribune business section in the process. At the time, Mason told TNT reporter Barbara Clements that he was only lukewarm on the idea of selling. The reality, he says now, is that he was never close.
Because of his age, this time is different, Mason said. He’s serious about selling Thornewood Carriage House, which was listed by a different local broker almost exactly a year ago and spent roughly 10 months on the market before being removed late last year.
Last week, Mason’s home hit the market again — this time with an extra quarter million tacked onto the sale price for good measure.
“You have to find someone that cares about this stuff,” Mason said of his quest for a buyer.
Pierce County’s luxury market
According to Marquelle Butler, a broker at John L. Scott Tacoma North, the current market for high-end homes in the Tacoma area usually provides quicker sales.
Butler declined to specifically discuss Thornewood Carriage House since it’s actively on the market, but broadly she said that even homes in the $2 million-plus price range don’t last long in the most desirable parts of Pierce County, provided they’re appropriately priced and promise the kinds of features and amenities the extremely wealthy expect.
“You tend to see properties come on the market Thursday with offer review dates on Monday or Tuesday. And if you’ve priced that home correctly, in this price range you will have anywhere from three to five offers,” Butler said. “If you’re not seeing that, it’s likely that you priced the property a little bit too high, and the market will reflect that.”
For Mason, haggling over price misses the point.
In his mind, anyone who buys Thornewood Carriage House will be getting a screaming deal.
Mason estimates he spent roughly $3 million transforming the home and making sure every detail was just right — and that was more than 40 years ago.
With handmade gold switch plates that cost as much as some cars and doors that date back to the 1700s, if ever a home could be accurately described as “priceless,” this is it, he said.
Now he just needs someone with a whole lot of money to agree with him.
“It’s kind of a bittersweet thing. I mean, I have to move on. I’ve accepted that,” Mason said of his decision to sell.
“I hope a person like me when I was young buys it.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
