Hank Slack is serving coffee in a delicate china set by the fireplace in his wood-paneled, Sister Parish-designed library. We are at Ellistan, the nearly 80-acre estate near Bedminster, N.J., that his family has owned for more than four decades and is now listed for sale.
The house and its contents feel like a throwback to the 1930s, when the house was built. As the economic upheaval of the Great Depression made urban life in New York City more stressful, many of the city’s wealthiest business titans fled to this area, about 40 miles west of Manhattan, in search of a more rural lifestyle, where they could ride horses, hunt foxes and live quietly away from the public glare.
A hundred years later, the same principles that once made Bedminster so popular persist. The rooms in many of these great mansions are still filled with canopy-covered four-poster beds, antique furniture and needlepoint pillows, and there are often mud-crusted riding boots by the door. A few are still owned by descendants of the same families that built them.
“We still have dirt roads. There’s still a fox hunt. It’s still very green,” said publishing scion Kip Forbes, whose father, Malcolm Forbes, purchased their family’s estate in Bedminster in 1950. “People snicker when they see Garden State on our license plates, but there are still a lot of gardens in the Garden State.”
The area is slated to be in the spotlight in late May, when President Donald J. Trump typically decamps here from the White House to Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, also known as the Summer White House. Here’s a look at what it is like to live in and around Bedminster.
(YouTube/Turpin Realtors)
(TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
The Lay of the Land
With a population of just over 8,000, Bedminster is one of five towns that comprise the Somerset Hills area of New Jersey, an affluent region known for its rolling countryside, historic estates and Gilded Age history.
Bedminster is typically considered the most heavily equestrian of the Somerset Hills towns; bridle trails run through the grounds of many of the large estates, many of which grant a right of way to riders.
The wider area is home to the Essex Fox Hounds, one of the oldest hunting clubs in the U.S., incorporated in 1913. The Far Hills Race Meeting, a steeplechase in which horses race over fences and other obstacles, takes place every October and draws roughly 30,000 spectators to the area, turning the quiet community into a spectacle of tailgating, ice carving and picnics.
The most luxurious Bedminster estates are located within an area that has 10-acre parcel zoning to preserve the rural character. Many are off dirt roads. As such, Range Rovers, as opposed to Ferraris or other designer cars, are more popular.
“I have clients who are looking for a house in the area, but they will not look at anything off a dirt road because of their Bentley,” laughed local agent Kelly Gordon of Kienlen Lattmann Sotheby’s International Realty. “It can be a negative for some people, because you can’t take your Lamborghini out on a dirt road.”
Beyond horse friendliness, the dirt roads have their upsides. They are rarely used as throughroads, keeping them extra private, Gordon said.
(YouTube/Turpin Realtors)
(YouTube/Turpin Realtors)
A Presidential Neighbor
President Trump bought the roughly 600-acre property now known as Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in 2002. The price was never made public, but Trump has said he paid less than $35 million. President Trump did not respond for requests for comment.
Previously called Lamington Farm, the Georgian Revival-style mansion and surrounding acreage had once been owned by John DeLorean, who was famous for his creation of the winged-door DeLorean sports car, which was in production from 1981 to 1983 and was immortalized in the film “Back to the Future.”
Trump transformed the property into a private country club with two championship golf courses, a clubhouse with a restaurant and a private helipad. After her 2022 death, President Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump was buried in a private plot at the club.
Local agents said they haven’t seen the direct impact to their market from Trump’s presidency that their counterparts in Palm Beach and Washington, D.C. report. The president is usually only there in the summer. “Some people find it a draw, and some people find it a deterrent—and everybody seems to have a strong opinion,” said Gordon.
A visit from Trump does come with some minor inconveniences, including the sound of helicopters and military aircraft overhead, residents said. Protesters or supporters sometimes gather in what’s referred to locally as the “free-speech zone” outside the library on the corner of Route 206 and Lamington Road.
(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“When he’s in town, there’s definitely heightened security vehicles everywhere,” said local resident Dr. Nader Youssef.
Of the nearly 5,000 Bedminster voters who turned out to the polls in the 2024 election, nearly 52% cast their ballot for their occasional neighbor.
Other major names associated with Bedminster include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. While Onassis kept homes in the area—in nearby Peapack-Gladstone and Bernardsville—from the 1960s until her death in 1994, she kept her horses at Fox Chase Stables in nearby Bedminster and rode at the Essex Fox Hounds.
The Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical family also has significant holdings in the area. Property records show that Woody Johnson, co-owner of the New York Jets, purchased an estate on Lamington Road, the main artery of Bedminster, for $3.3 million in 1984.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Land of Grand Estates
Many of Bedminster’s grand estates were built by prominent investment bankers and industrialists from New York, who chose Colonial Revival or Georgian-style manors, many of which still stand.
“They were socially elite, and so they were almost inherently a little bit more conservative; they wanted a more traditional architectural style,” said William Barry Thomson, a local historian who has co-written several books on the area.
Even the newer homes in town seem to replicate that classic aesthetic; it is rare to find a contemporary, glassy home in the area, Gordon said.
“It’s certainly not McMansion land,” Thomson said.
One of the most famous estates is Timberfield, the 34-acre compound once owned by Malcolm Forbes. Forbes and his wife, Bertie Forbes, purchased the property in 1950, when Bertie was pregnant with their third child. The oldest part of the property is said to have been built in the late 1700s as a hunting lodge, according to one of Thomson’s books.
Forbes, a notorious showman, added his own flamboyant finishes, including a primary suite by yacht designer Jon Bannenberg. It had a bed that rotated 360 degrees, spotlights that could be set to different moods, leather-padded ceilings and Italian granite walls.
In 1987, Forbes hosted a party to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Forbes magazine, drawing a flurry of celebrities and major CEOs to Bedminster. Malcolm’s son Kip recalled attendee Donald Trump arguing with an executive from Pan Am about who had the bigger plane. President Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Elizabeth Taylor, with whom Malcolm had a relationship after his divorce from Bertie, was a frequent visitor. “She was a wonderfully down-to-earth person,” said Kip. “She loved going out on motorcycle runs.”
Kip briefly put Timberfield on the market more than a decade ago for $4.25 million, but ultimately decided not to sell, he said.
Other notable properties include Dunwalke, a 1930s-era Georgian Revival property designed by Cross & Cross and built by the late Clarence Dillon, a Wall Street investment banker. It was built using brick reclaimed from the ruins of an 18th-century Virginia property once owned by George Washington, according to Thomson’s work.
The estate, which once spanned more than 2,000 acres, has been broken up over the years. Some of it is still in the hands of Dillon’s descendants. The parcel with the roughly 20,000-square-foot main house was sold to John Thornton, former president of Goldman Sachs, for roughly $18 million in 2002. Another parcel that was once owned by Dillon’s son, C. Douglas Dillon, who was U.S. treasury secretary in the 1960s, is known as Dunwalke East. It was subsequently sold to the late Dexter Earle, another major Wall Street executive.
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Things to Do
Bedminster’s Main Street is relatively sparse, populated with just a handful of local businesses, such as a pizza shop, a law office and a funeral home.
“Blink and you’ll miss it,” said local real-estate agent John Turpin. The Pluckemin Inn, an upscale American restaurant in a reconstructed Federalist-style building, is in Bedminster, and the Tewksbury Inn, a historic 1800s inn, is in the center of Oldwick roughly 6 miles away. Locals also recommend the Oldwick General Store, an upscale deli that serves fresh-baked bread and pastries.
Fox hunting is still a popular pastime. Andrew Allen, Clarence Dillon’s great-grandson, operates a private hunting preserve with his wife, Ali Allen, on part of the old Dunwalke preserve. He said they specialize in bringing the “old, traditional sports of the past” back to the area, raising pheasants on their property and hosting shooting events by invitation only. Guests dress up for the occasion in traditional British-style hunting regalia.
The Allens said they specialize in “farm-to-fork” cuisine, serving game from the property at their hosted lunches and suppers.
By the Numbers
- Median listing price: $641,500 (up 36.9% year over year)
- Average days on market: 12 (down from 15 days year over year)
- Number of active listings: 11 ( down 21.4% year over year)
Data is for March 2025.
Source: Realtor.com
On the Market
$2.25 Million
4 beds | 5 baths
4,781 sq. ft. | 3 acres
(Realtor.com)
This property, owned by Youssef and his wife, Lilian Youssef, was designed by Nader’s architect father. It was built in 2012. Youssef said he was originally drawn to the area for its large undeveloped parcels of land, lower taxes, proximity to major highways and its school system.
$14 Million
9 beds | 12 baths
Roughly 13,000 sq. ft. | 77 acres
Located just outside of Bedminster, this home, known as Ellistan and owned by Hank Slack, was designed by architect A. Musgrave Hyde in 1931 and includes a Norman-style residence clad in stone, a three-bedroom guesthouse, a stable complex with 10 stalls, three apartments, a stocked pond, a pool and tennis court.
