Pennsylvania builder Robert McElroy was decades into a career of building homes in and around Philadelphia by the time he got started on a house of his own at Rabbit Run Road in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Completed in 1975 and nestled into a 5-acre wooded lot, the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom home was built to suit his three-person family and inspired by the graceful lines and expansive windows of California modernism. However, the design also reflected his own naturalistic bend: local cherry and black walnut millwork span the interior, and the home is clad in 100-year-old bald Cyprus sourced from mushroom barns.
Now, the residence at 36 Rabbit Run Road is on the market for the first time, listed for just under $2 million.
“It’s truly like living within a sculpture or living within a piece of art,” said Compass broker Marion Dinofa, the home’s listing agent. Even Dinofa, who says she specializes in “these unique modern and contemporary homes,” has a soft spot for the residence. “This one is really at the very top of my list of favorites.”
The home has lots of wood — some from mushroom barns
Although the home bears similarities to the hundreds of others McElroy built, the Rabbit Run Road house is, of course, the builder’s own. In addition to its lush cherry and black walnut millwork, the structure tracks along a sloping site, mostly on a single story, arranged in three volumes.
Staggered metal roofs add dynamism to the three-volume residence. Glassy hallways connect each volume, working with floor-to-ceiling windows and angular skylights to frame views of the surrounding woods filled with wood ducks, blue herons, deer and foxes.
Inside, McElroy oriented walls and built-ins to showcase artwork by painter and sculptor Annamaria McElroy, his wife. The residence also includes an expansive studio for her work, equipped with a full bathroom and an exceptionally long wood counter sourced from a tree that fell on the McElroys’ land.
“You have a ton of beautiful views, but there are expanses of wall space” to house an extensive art collection, Dinofa explained —something that isn’t always the case with the contemporary homes she sells.
The home also features a different kind of art created by woodworker Horace Hartshaw. A collaborator of artist Wharton Esherick, Hartshaw carved the timber finishes through the home, integrating bentwood and organic forms into spiraling staircases, curving countertops and rounded railings.
Wood also dominates the exterior; thanks to the ample Cyprus planks McElroy saved from barns in Kennett Square. The nearby borough, which calls itself the “world’s mushroom capital,” hosts an annual Mushroom Festival and produces more than 60% of the U.S. mushroom crop.
“When I found that out,” Dinofa noted, “I was like, I have to put that in the marketing.”
After 50 years in the family, sellers are looking for a steward
Robert and Annamaria McElroy resided in the home until their deaths. Both lived into their 90s and died six months apart — she in 2023 and he in 2024 — and the home is hitting the market for the first time in 50 years.
“We really want to find a great steward who’s going to carry on the tradition of the home,” Dinofa said.
So far, the listing has garnered a breadth of interest, with artists, musicians, and woodworkers in the market interested in the home’s creative legacy. Still, Dinofa noted, its $2 million price tag and individuality mean “it’s one of those houses that you have to think about for a minute.”
Some buyers might adore the space, which the McElroys largely kept updated over the years, she explained, but not be ready to upkeep acres of wooded land.
“It’s a lot of property and a lot of house,” she noted. As cool as these kinds of niche homes are, she explained, “they tend to take a little longer to find that right buyer.”