Round Meadow and the View Ahead
House Tour | written by: PAMELA DEY VOSSLER with the Bowling Sisters and “The Story of Round Meadow” | photos by: BAMBI RIEGEL | riegelpictureworks.com
The house at Round Meadow
HOUSES GET LUCKY SOMETIMES, as does the property around them, giving both a shot at a chance to educate, entertain and inspire in perpetuity with all they’ve seen as they move on to all they’ve yet to be—as full of possibility as they are keepers of an instructive past, paying forward an aspirational essence. The luck comes from those with the vision to preserve, restore and make current what has been without tossing the past.
The land and house of what has been known as the Round Meadow estate in Tokeneke for the last 100 years have had that good fortune, passionately stewarded as they’ve been nearly since the Sellecks—one of Darien’s founding families—took ownership and farmed the property as part of their vast holdings back in the early 1700s.
Its history—exhaustively researched and written by current owners Belinda Bowling Metzger and her twin Nancy Bowling Gramps who, along with their younger sister, Stephanie Bowling Zeigler, inherited the house and 12 remaining acres of the original 22-acre estate from their mom, Ann Bowling, in 2023 after she died (their father James predeceased their mom in 1997)—reads as part Edith Wharton novel, part Peyton Place, and part environmental conservation documentary. It’s as riveting as the overhaul of the magnificent 10,000-square-foot home the twins began more than a year ago to prepare it for sale, and as the story of the efforts to preserve the land.
It’s a history that has come alive in the renovation as an army of craftsmen and workers have peeled back layers of wallpaper and removed walls to expose remnants of past iterations of the home and restore the grandeur of its original archways, moldings, windows, wrought iron railings and expansive terraces. Even the original, sweeping driveway is being rebuilt.
It is work of careful preservation done even as they gut the bathrooms (one for each of the home’s seven bedrooms plus three powder rooms), replace the HVAC system and the entire electrical system, install an uber modern kitchen, pantry and mudroom and enlarge a master bedroom/bathroom suite, revamping spaces to correlate with how we live today.
The original structure on the property came in 1906 as a summer retreat for Jane Spencer Rickard, who later married the linoleum magnate Walter Davis Blabon. She bought two additional parcels of land that combined to become a major part of the 22 acre-property so treasured and protected by subsequent owners, including heiress Minnie Arents Young who bought the property in 1927 in anticipation of her daughter Edna’s return from England. (She had landed there in 1907 after abandoning her four-year-old daughter and marriage to Standard Oil heir Alfred Dieterich for a Vanderbilt coachman and horse trainer. She and the trainer divorced in 1926.) In 1928, with extensive renovations underway that transformed the look of that first house to the Mediterranean style it retains today, Minnie transferred ownership to Edna, who named the estate “Round Meadow.”
Edna, an ardent gardener, married her private secretary, John Oldrin, in 1932. He was 20 years her junior, and as devoted to Edna as they both were to Round Meadow. After Edna’s death in 1952 amidst condolences from Charles and Anne Lindbergh, friends who lived just down the road, John rented then ultimately sold the main house with 4.28 acres and moved to the gardener’s “cottage,” retaining 18 of the original 22 acres. In 1957, he married Jinnie Knowlton, 20 years his junior, who had rented the main house with her first husband Hugh from 1954 to 1956 before divorcing. Jinnie, a passionate naturalist and conservationist, was a director of the Darien Land Trust, president of the Conservation Commission of Darien, director of the Darien Audubon Society and Chairman of the Environmental Protection Commission. She was also a founding member of the Darien Nature Center. John and Jinnie would go on to donate five acres of their land to the Darien Land Trust (DLT).
No matter the drama, the social whirlwinds or the parade of notables who came through Round Meadow, including tennis greats Stan Smith, Bob Lutz and Arthur Ashe, the Lindberghs, Andy Rooney, Treat Williams and many other well-known actors, authors and artists, as well as countless CEOs of major U.S. corporations, “I think everybody who lived there had a passion for the house and for the property,” said Belinda.
The expansive terrace and breathtaking grounds of Round Meadow
“We used to joke that my father bought the land, and my mother bought the house,” said Nancy of her parents who purchased the main house at Round Meadow in 1971. “But mom came to really love the property too and she wanted to protect it,” Nancy continued, sharing how in 2009, her mom bought more than six of the acres from Jinnie’s estate that John had subdivided away from the house and land she and James purchased. In buying the additional land, Ann restored Round Meadow to its nearly ethereal open state, a place out of time, of vast meadows and grazing wildlife, with the promise to the Oldrin children that she would not develop the acquired property during her lifetime. (The rest of the original 22 acres had been sold irrevocably to other owners.) In 2011, she donated 1.027 acres to the DLT.
In tribute to their parents and driven by how they were raised, the twins and Stephanie donated another nearly two acres to the DLT at the end of 2024.
“When mom passed, we knew this was exactly what we wanted to do, not only to honor our parents in a meaningful way, but also to recognize those who cared for and protected the land before them, making this gift possible today,” said the sisters.
So easily could they have left the house to be razed, forgotten; divided the remaining land once and for all, sold the lots and moved on. But the sisters know, as did their parents and generations of owners before: new and updated can exist side by side with preservation and conservation, protecting the past to lay the foundation for an even stronger future—the luckiest thing of all.
