This is the guest house located on billionaire Les Wexner’s massive New Albany, Ohio estate. Lex is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Limited Brands. The Georgian style main house is said to be roughly 40,000 square feet in size. Then there’s the guest house, pictured above, which is bigger than most people’s homes! John Stefanidis designed the interiors of the Neoclassical-style guesthouse pavilion. The structure was recently remodeled by Donald Insall Associates, which expanded the porticoes and added a new entablature, columns and fretwork balustrades. Most of the rooms radiate off the two-story rotunda, which is ringed with a balcony and symmetrically arranged bookcases and is capped by a dome with trompe l’oeil coffering.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW LES’ HOME IN BING MAPS
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Tags: businessmen, ohio
My goodness. This has to be the most straight-edged home I’ve ever seen. Not a single curve or out-of-place architectural element anywhere. A little too perfect for me. The guest house is downright stunning and Arch Digest ready. I’m just not a fan of the “handle” on top of the house. Looks like a purse from the birds-eye.
The main house looks amazing
This guest house is much nicer than the majority of main houses I’ve seen…
The exterior is extraordinarily hideous (not difficult for a Georgian home), which I think makes the interior look more attractive than it really is. That said, I do like the execution of the dome structure and the balustrading on the second floor, as well as the lounge walls and fireplace (but I can’t say I’m a fan of the colour of the sitting provisions). The bedroom has way too much noisy detail going on. You could get a similar effect by painting the room in 100s and 1000s sprinkles.
Also, what is with the archway structure protuding from the roof? It looks rediculous.
I do not care for the outside at all. It looks like a library with a helipad on top. The interior is lovely in its own way, but comes off looking more like a movie set than anything else. I also think it’s interesting that the Wexner has a huge house that surely has at least one guest room, but has this place that requires a car ride to get to. I guess this is where guests he really doesn’t want to interact with very often go.
There is no way the library can be part of the guest house. That has to be the main house. I looked at the guest house on Bird’s Eye, it looks like its no more than 3,000 square feet. I think pics 2 through 6 are of the main house.
If you look through the doorways visible in the rotunda picture (I’m assuming that’s what you’re referring to) you can see that the rooms match the other pictures. The rooms themselves are probably just smaller than they look, for example the dining room only seats 4 but it’s not obvious unless you count the chairs.
As it has been said before by someone here, taking good pictures makes all the difference. No published pictures of the main house are available.
The interiors are amazing!
Just thought I’d give you the facts on this building. Those 4 connected “stacks” on the top are the fireplace chimneys….and by the way this guest house measures approx. 10,000 sq ft. and the library indeed is inside. What throws you off is the scale. Ceiling heights in this and the main house are close to 20 ft.It was being built by one of Les’ business partners as he and his wife’s main residence. It was to be called “Rotunda House”, but Les and the partner had a falling out. Thus, instant guest house! (Guest house sets on top of a hill like an English Folly approx 1 mile away from main house. It has a tree Alle with a direct visual connection to the main house. Did you notice from Bing maps that there is no swimming pool where there should be one? Anyway,the whole grand site was designed by noted architect and designer Thiery Despont around 1988. At that time Les was 3rd richest man in America. Lots has changed in this new era of robber barons!
One fun aspect of the main house is its built for public functions as well as comfort, not over-the-top decoration. In the main house professional kitchens are in the basement and large elevators send the tables up, already set and perfectly ready for large fund raisers etc. /Something else you might note in a Bing map are is the large apple orchard. Les bought a mature old orchard in Virginia and had about 500 trees moved to the site.