Gilded Age Mansion at Center of Billion-Dollar Bankruptcy

The Crocker-McMillin mansion stands as a monument to American excess, its 50,000 square feet of Jacobean-inspired grandeur overlooking New Jersey's Ramapo Mountains. Built in 1907 at a cost of $2 million, this sprawling estate has witnessed the rise and fall of fortunes across three distinct eras.

Today, the property is listed for $19 million, a fraction of its former glory's price tag. The mansion's journey from railroad baron's retreat to seminary to fraud convict's asset tells a fascinating story of wealth, faith, and federal crime.

Constructed with steel beams and concrete floors, the building is practically fireproof.

The estate's current chapter began in 2021 when Miles Guo purchased the property for $26 million. Just two months later, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Federal prosecutors later revealed that despite his bankruptcy and decades of debts, Guo spent $18 million of his fraud victims' money outfitting the mansion, including $1 million on Persian and Chinese carpets.

The mansion's story begins with George Crocker, a childless, 46-year-old widower and one of the richest heirs of the Gilded Age. As the son of Charles Crocker, cofounder of the Central Pacific Railroad, he inherited $6 million and had cash to burn. In 1902, he commissioned architect James Brite to create a masterpiece modeled after Bramshill, a British castle built in the early 1600s.

The five-year construction project used red Harvard brick and ornately sculpted Indiana limestone for the exterior. The result was an H-shaped mansion designed for lavish entertaining, originally called Darlington. The estate featured 21 bedrooms and sat on 1,100 acres of lushly landscaped grounds—though the property has since been reduced to just 12 acres.

Crocker's guests could enjoy an array of amenities that were state-of-the-art for 1907:

• Steam boilers for a novel heating system
• Laundry machines and a central vacuum system
• Elevators and a telephone switchboard
• Ice cream freezers powered by electricity
• A lake stocked with 4,000 trout for fishing
• A trotting track for training and racing horses

The mansion's interior was equally impressive, featuring a spacious dining room walled in California redwood and warmed by a white marble fireplace. Guests could retire to a mural and gold-leaf trimmed library or shoot pool in the billiards hall. Fifteen servants' rooms filled the third floor, and a refrigerated flower room off the entrance hall kept bouquets fresh.

The Crocker-McMillin mansion is renowned for its exceptional craftsmanship. A 1912 feature in The Architectural Record noted that "No private house in the United States, perhaps, is so rich in carvings wrought by hand out of solid wood." The most elaborate carvings grace the two-story Great Hall, which features 30-foot coffered ceilings and a pair of Tiffany silver chandeliers that still hang today.

The Great Hall's most curious feature is a 30-foot player pipe organ built by the Aeolian Company of New York City. This colossal machine, powerful enough to rattle the white oak wainscoting, is one of only a handful of such organs left intact and functioning in its original location. During the Gilded Age, such organs were a requisite for the mansions of the Carnegies, Fords, Mellons, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers.

Those without musical skills could insert an "organ roll"—a long, perforated paper scroll similar to those for player pianos—from Aeolian's catalogue of 2,000 compositions, and let the towering instrument do the rest. The Great Hall's 80-foot expanse, viewed from the massive fireplace, creates an unforgettable impression of scale and luxury.

The mansion's interior is rich with hand-carved details, including intricately carved stone angels that grace the interior spaces. The library ceiling still features original hand-painted murals with gold trim, a testament to the property's Gilded Age opulence.

George Crocker had little time to enjoy his masterpiece. He died of stomach cancer in late 1909, barely two years after moving in. In 1912, the estate was purchased for $1 million by Emerson McMillin, a noted banker, art collector, Civil War veteran, and philanthropist. McMillin avidly promoted the natural sciences and education, serving as a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and contributing to Commander Robert Peary's polar expeditions.

McMillin and his wife Isabelle threw lively picnics for local Sunday schoolers and lavish parties for friends at Darlington. However, his frequent travels between the mansion and Wall Street would prove fatal. According to a former vice rector of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, McMillin died after being crushed by a crowd on a New York City subway train.

The pushing and shoving was too much, and one of his ribs was fractured. He reached home safely but never recovered. Pleurisy, then pneumonia set in.

After McMillin's death in 1922, the property lay empty for four years before being sold for $478,000 to the Archdiocese of Newark. In April 1927, the inaugural class of 75 seminarians moved in, transforming the mansion into the Immaculate Conception Seminary. The Archdiocese used the Great Hall as a chapel, installing an altar at the base of the massive stone fireplace.

The seminary operated for 56 years, providing a pastoral setting for student priests far from secular temptations. As Monsignor Robert Wister, author of a history of the seminary, explained: "The idea was that priests should not go to school near secular temptations, like there would be in a city. Mahwah was the furthest thing from civilization you could get!"

After the Archdiocese sold the property to real estate developers in 1983, the mansion deteriorated for years until 2008, when Ilija Pavlovic purchased it for $8.8 million. The New Jersey real estate executive spent seven years and millions of dollars restoring the mansion to its Gilded Age glory. He brought in Italian woodworkers—whose labors also grace the Italian Parliament and New York City's Ritz-Carlton and Waldorf Astoria hotels—to restore the decorative carvings.

Pavlovic's improvements included:

• 19 new bathrooms and energy-saving windows
• A professional kitchen serving 250 meals at a time
• A spa, lap pool, beauty salon, and gym
• A poker room, cigar room, and movie theater
• Two new fountains, a tennis court, and an eight-car garage
• An additional pool with a neighboring cabana

In 2017, Pavlovic listed the mansion for $48 million. After four years and a significant price drop, Miles Guo purchased it for $26 million in December 2021. Guo, a former billionaire, was arrested in early 2023 and convicted of defrauding his business investors in 2024. He forfeited the mansion's title to his bankruptcy estate later that year.

The home remains listed for sale at $19 million, with proceeds helping to pay some $1 billion in debt claims. As the listing invites: "Come own a piece of history."

The Crocker-McMillin mansion represents more than just architectural splendor—it embodies the cyclical nature of American wealth. From George Crocker's railroad fortune to Emerson McMillin's banking empire, from the Archdiocese's spiritual mission to Ilija Pavlovic's entrepreneurial vision, and finally to Miles Guo's fraudulent billions, the property has mirrored the economic fortunes of its owners.

Today, as the mansion awaits its next chapter, it stands as a testament to both the heights of Gilded Age opulence and the consequences of modern financial crimes. The 75-room estate with its 30-foot player pipe organ, hand-carved stone angels, and mural-bedecked ceilings offers a rare opportunity to own a piece of American architectural history.

For prospective buyers, the mansion promises not just a home, but a story spanning over a century of American life—from the excess of the Gilded Age through the spiritual devotion of the seminary years to the cautionary tale of modern financial fraud. The property's next owner will become part of its continuing narrative, adding their own chapter to this remarkable American story.