Brenda Rever saw her house for the first time more than 30 years before she bought it. It was in the early 1980s, and she and her then-husband toured it as a potential family home for them and their three kids. She loved the soaring ceilings and expansive views of the Wye River. He didn’t think it was a good fit.
Years later, after she was divorced and remarried, Rever and her husband, Phil, were shopping for a new home on the Eastern Shore. She remembered that Norman Jaffe-designed waterfront estate and took him to see it. When she knocked on the front door, the owners offered a tour.
“It was beautiful, just as I remembered,” Rever said. “And my husband fell in love with it.”
She asked the owners if they were looking to sell.
“No, but give us your card and we’ll give you ours,” they told her. “If anything changes, we’ll call you.”
Twelve years later, they did. Rever and her husband bought the house in 2016.
It was built in the early 1980s by Jaffe, an architect known for his modernist, sculptural waterfront homes in New York, including more than 50 houses in the Hamptons.
This 7,000-square-foot house is believed to be his only one in Maryland. It was built at the request of Larry Israel, onetime president of The Washington Post Co. In the 1990s, it was owned by Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, according to property records.
The Revers updated the kitchen and a bathroom and added interior walls to make room for hanging artwork. A bedroom was converted to an office. Part of the living room was opened to create a sun porch. They added landscaping to the exterior, which already had features built by an Italian stonemason.
The house opens to a foyer with Tennessee quarry flagstone flooring and a sculptural floating staircase. A wall of slanted windows casts the living and dining rooms in natural light. In a sitting area, a fireplace is built into a stone wall. A white kitchen with walls of windows has a dishwasher hidden at eye level. The screened-in porch overlooks the Wye River. This main level has an office, laundry and wet bar.
The second floor has the primary suite, with a wall of windows framing the waterfront, a fireplace, two walk-in closets and a bathroom with a glass-enclosed shower. An elevator connects the suite to the first level.
The detached guesthouse, which Rever had taken down to studs and renovated, has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. It has two new bedrooms — one facing the water, one facing the woods — and a kitchen and living room.
Outside is a heated pool, hot tub, pool house and stone patio. A 340-foot pier has a boat lift; davits; and deepwater access for boating, fishing and swimming. The five-acre property is on Bennetts Point, 17 miles from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
After Rever’s husband died in 2023, she decided to downsize. But to her, the 30-plus-year wait for this home was worthwhile: “It was my dream house.”
$3,495,000
3207 Bennett Point Rd., Queenstown, Maryland
- Bedrooms/bathrooms: 1/3 in main house; 4/4 in guesthouse
- Approximate square footage: 7,000
- Lot size: Five acres
- Listing agent: Brian Gearhart, Benson & Mangold
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