Houston’s Most Expensive Home Gets Reduced in Price… to $30 Million

The Real Story Behind the 27,000 Square Foot Memorial Mansion Dubbed Chateau Carnarvon

By Annie Gallay // Mar 23, 2018

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In 2018, Chateau Cornarvon was the most expensive residential listing in Houston history. (Photo by Houston Area Realty.)

Chateau Cornarvon is on 2.33 secluded acres in Memorial.

The pool view of the 27,000 square foot Chateau Carnarvon that Marie and Ed Bosarge called home before his exit for a Russian socialite.

The grand entrance to Chateau Cornarvon.

Chateau Cornarvon was designed to evoke French refinement.

High, meticulously decorated ceilings are an elegant calling card at Chateau Cornarvon.

Dark blue marble accents complement this high ceiling in the 27,000 square foot Chateau Cornarvon from which Marie Bosarge was ousted.

The Chateau Cornarvon wood paneled walls in the living room are gilded in gold.

The dramatic stained glass domed ceiling rises above the central staircase at Chateau Cornarvon.

This plush home theater is ideal for movie nights at Chateau Cornarvon.

Chateau Cornarvon features two kitchens, including one for catering.

Chandeliers and marble columns line this long hallway at Chateau Cornarvon.

Coffered wood ceilings on the back veranda add a further note of elegance at Chateau Cornarvon.

Chateau Cornarvon features graceful stairways.

Even with its jaw-dropping grandeur, its Versailles influences and its 27,000 square feet, Chateau Carnarvon caused a real estate stir and broke all pricing records in 2014 when the Memorial area mansion went on the market for an astounding $43 million.

Four years later, with no takers, it’s mark down time. Yet, even with a dramatic cost reduction to a mere $30 million, Chateau Carnarvon currently remains the most expensive residential listing in the region.

Wilbur “Ed” Bosarge Jr. and his now estranged wife Marie Taylor Bosarge purchased the partially finished palatial mansion at 100 Carnarvon in 2010 and went about embellishing every corner from the eight bedrooms to the lavish Versailles salon. The couple exercised its taste for the highest level of luxury including reproduced period moldings, antique boiserie, white marble tiles, scraped hardwood floors, European statuary and seven elaborately carved marble fireplaces.

Visitors, and there have been many due to the couple’s generosity with the house as a charitable fundraising venue, have long been in awe of the exquisite detailing throughout the house, be it the gilded wood panels imported from Europe or the hand-painted detailing. Parties for AVDA, UNICEF and Music Doing Good (founded by Marie Bosarge) introduced the city to a lavish lifestyle that few experience.

Guests have been fêted in the rotunda, reception hall and the music room. They have been given full range across the 2.33 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens that include citrus groves, rose gardens, fountains and a beautiful swimming pool. The entire estate is magnificent, something that only a King Louis XIV or an Ed Bosarge could imagine.

The 411

Eight bedrooms, eight full baths, four partial baths, a theater, sun room, billiard room, exercise studio, breakfast room, formal dining room, family kitchen, catering kitchen, and a four-car air-conditioned garage that boasts commercial refrigeration to accommodate catering and floral needs. The master suite includes the richly-appointed bedroom, a dressing suite, walk-in closets, and bathing and massage rooms. Detached staff quarters complete the picture.

Ed Bosarge is a world renowned mathematician as well as co-founder, CEO, and chairman emeritus of Quantlab Financial LLC, founder of Capital Technologies Inc. and founder and chairman of Black Beret Life Sciences LLC.

Kellie Geitner of Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.