The N.J. mansion President Grover Cleveland retired to is for sale

This Princeton home is not just grand — it’s fit for a president.

It was once owned by Grover Cleveland — the only U.S. President to serve two non-consecutive terms. He bought it to retire to after his second term as President ended in 1897 and lived there until his death in 1908.

The six bedroom, five full and two half bathroom home is on the market now for $5.95 million.

“Architecturally it is magnificent,” said Maura Mills Callaway of Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty, the listing agent.

The home is known as Westland. It was built in 1856 for Robert F. Stockton, a U.S. Senator and naval commodore who captured California during the Mexican-American War. Cleveland named it Westland after his friend Andrew Fleming West, a humanities professor at Princeton University who helped him find the home.

While living there Cleveland added a two-story addition to the right side of the home, the lower level was a billiards room, and he changed the facade to be more Italianate, as was the style then.

The current owner hired Max Hayden to renovate and restore the home 20 years ago. His work earned an award.

“We tried to turn the clock back,” Hayden said. “To bring all the things that were done substandard up to snuff and in keeping with the house.”

The current owners had three young children when they moved in so the renovations that were done were focused on making the home more livable for a family — for example, creating a mudroom and a family room, he said.

A sunroom, which looked like the sunroom on the front of a Wendy’s, Hayden said, was made into a formal powder room and a coat closet.

The original kitchen was made into a billiards room in honor of Cleveland and to give the kids something to do, he said. A porch was enclosed and made into a breakfast room. A guest room was converted into a bathroom for the primary suite.

“The graciousness of its time is still there,” Mills Callaway said. “The traditional layout is still in tact and the flow from room to room works very well.”

In the midst of the project, Hayden and his wife were in a Winston-Salem antique store when he found a painting of Cleveland that came from a local bar. “It was probably a campaign poster,” he said, adding that he texted the homeowner who bought it, restored and framed the painting, which now hangs in the home’s foyer.

That and other Cleveland memorabilia will stay with the home after it’s sold, Mills Callaway said.

The home sits on a 1.5-acre lot with “beautiful formal gardens for sophisticated entertaining on one side and on the other side you have a beautiful pool and covered porch,” she said.

The neighborhood is comprised of other, equally grand houses, built between the 1850s and the 1920s. A privacy hedge runs along the road. It’s in walking distance to downtown Princeton, including Palmer Square. “It’s a very special neighborhood,” Mills Callaway said.

The home has 13-foot ceilings on the first floor and at least 10-foot ceilings on the second and third floor. “The house is filled with light,” she said. “The rooms are generous in size.”

It was listed April 19 and has generated “great interest,” Mills Callaway said. People who have toured it have commented on “the grandness of the home but also the comfortableness. The beauty of the architecture and the grounds.”

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Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com.