A look inside an 1880s Mount Vernon mansion built for Baltimore’s elite

When David Halpern first set foot in 829 Park Ave., he was filled with a sense of stewardship.

With intricate woodwork and ornamental moldings hidden beneath layers of disrepair, he still saw the Knabe House for what it was: a time portal to the past.

“You just don’t see that in houses today,” Halpern said of the home in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood. “I didn’t want to see this amazing piece of history just disappear.”

The Knabe House, which Halpern and his wife purchased in 2022 for $925,000, is a critical piece of Baltimore history — a home and meeting place for turn-of-the-century elites and international musicians dating back to the late 1700s.

A stained-glass skylight, Italian marble columns and a spectacular conservatory are just a few of the features the home boasts, alongside seven bedrooms and five bathrooms.

After spending two years restoring the home, the couple is preparing to part ways with it as they look to move closer to their children.

The home was supposed to be auctioned off. But after initial bids came in on Monday, the owners decided not to go through with it. The 7,000-square-foot home was formerly listed for $2.9 million. Its future is now unclear.

Realtor Brian DiNardo declined to comment.

A musical history

Since its genesis, the Knabe House has been inhabited by some of Baltimore’s wealthiest families.

Before any actual building was erected on the land in 1883, the property was home to a gentleman’s estate developed in the 1770s by John Eager Howard, who’d become Maryland’s fifth governor and a U.S. senator.

Other owners included distinguished Quaker philanthropist Francis T. King and Talbot Taylor, whose great-grandfather is the namesake for Talbot County.

But no one person was more important to its history than Ernest J. Knabe Jr.

That’s in large part because his great-grandfather was William Knabe, a German immigrant who eventually built a successful piano business in Baltimore.

William Knabe was meant to become an apothecary, in line with the family profession, according to the William Knabe Piano Institute. But the family’s fortune was decimated by Napoleon’s invasion of Germany, and he was forced to forgo university. Instead, he learned to make cabinets — a skill that would later propel him into building pianos.

In time, William Knabe took on a new line of work and fell in love. In hopes of marrying Christina Ritz, William Knabe agreed to migrate to the New World with her family. The couple planned to live on a farm in Missouri.

Those plans changed when Ritz’s father died on the voyage. Upon arriving at the Port of Baltimore, the family decided to stay.

William Knabe snapped up an apprenticeship with a local piano maker and earned a reputation as an excellent craftsman. He eventually founded a new family business: William Knabe and Company.

The company — later renamed the Knabe Piano Company — grew to become one of the three largest piano manufacturers in the United States.

Ernest Knabe Jr., who presided over the company after his father’s death, bought 829 Park Ave. in 1895 and owned the home for 25 years. Making it his own, he constructed the marble-columned conservatory.

His family continued to have an outsized influence on American music through a patchwork of sponsorships.

With that status came a penchant for hosting renowned musicians in Mount Vernon, including Polish-American pianist Arthur Rubinstein and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, among many others.

Although Ernest Knabe Jr. sold the home to a dentist who converted it into office space in 1920, the family’s legacy has remained a historical hallmark.

In the midst of several other sales, the home’s grandeur and architectural mastery began to fade.

Marble columns were encased. A new kitchen was built. Ornate bedrooms became offices.

By the time the Halperns bought the house in 2022, it had become a mere shell of its storied past.

“It would never have received a certificate of occupancy had the city actually seen the inside of the house,” Halpern said.

Plaster was crumbling and falling from the walls. Windowpanes were shattered or missing. Dozens of holes made for dentistry equipment broke through the living room floor. The roof leaked.

Together, the pair restored the Knabe House to its 1880s grandeur. There wasn’t a floor, wall or ceiling they didn’t have to repair, he said.

“I do feel a sense of responsibility to make it what it could be and what it has been so others could enjoy it in the future,” Halpern said.

Despite its restoration, the couple’s initial attempts to sell the home failed. The Halperns listed the mansion for $3.4 million in June 2024, Zillow records showed. The listing reappeared online in 2025, going for $2.9 million, a roughly 14% discount.