Marge Schott's Ambleside

SELLER: Estate of Marge Schott
LOCATION: Blome Road, Indian Hill, OH
PRICE: $5,400,000
SIZE: 7 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: A rare & unique opportunity to own historic Ambleside! Truly exceptional design & construction in glorious setting. More rooms & detail than can be listed. Gorgeous woodwork & windows! Includes greenhouse & kennels, 15+ lush acres!

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We spend a great deal of time around here yakking about properties on the coasts, but today we're going to jump on the Reading Railroad and head into the heartland of America to discuss a posh property in the flyover state of Ohio, a place that Your Mama confesses that we've never actually been.

Anyhoo, baseball's bitchiest ol' bat Marge Schott may have gone to meet the Great Umpire in the Sky in March of 2004, but it's only now that the charitable foundation to which she left her suburban Cincinnati estate called Ambleside is getting around to selling the place. Thanks to the Cincinnati Snitch, Your Mama has learned that sprawling estate on Blome Road in rural and wealthy Indian Hill which the famously cantankerous coot owned since the dawn of time has been listed at $5,400,000.

As the children might imagine, Your Mama knows about as much about baseball as we know about sumo wrestling. However, we do know that Miz Schott was the first woman to buy a major league baseball team as opposed to inheriting it from her huzband. We also recall from our reading that although the foul mouthed right winger was banned for her scandalous and despicably racist comments, no one loved her team the Cincinnati Reds as much as Marge Schott.

According to Cincinnati Snitch, Marge Schott's Ambleside originally spread over 62 acres, but the foundation has split the great estate up and is selling the place off in chunks. The main house sits on good sized parcel of just over 15 acres and according to Mister Snich, there another ten five acre lots. Mister Snitch swears one of the lots, the one with the pool and pool house, has already been sold but Your Mama can not verify that sale.

Property records show the house–which looks to Your Mama like the sort of house Hansel and Gretel would buy if they were tire tycoons–measures in at 12,087 square feet. Listing information indicates there are seven bedrooms and 8 bathrooms (5 full and 3 halfs) in the main house. Included in the sale are the greenhouse and kennel where Miz Schott kept her beloved and big bodied St. Bernards including Schotzie whom she reportedly allowed to defecate on the well manicured turf at Riverfront Stadium, much to the chagrin of the grounds keepers, natch.

Only a precious few interior photographs have been included with the listing but from what we see, Miz Schott's house is a grand old ladee indeed. We're not loving the churchy feel of the main living room, but the room with the mouth watering woodwork is exquisite if in need of some spit, polish and restoration. Your Mama somewhat sheepishly confesses that we're digging the room with the robin's egg blue paint–which we think is the dining room. We're also thinking that if we could replace the chandelier with something positively poofter like this, remove the rug to expose the dark wood floors, paint the firebox black, toss in a few white sofas (because everyone knows Your Mama loves us some white sofas) and pull that gorgeous blue color up and and over the ceiling we might be in heaven.

The Cincinnati Snitch also whispered in Your Mama's big ear that the somewhat shabby looking manse has not been updated since the 1950s and that there's still coal in the basement for the furnace, the heat is radiator and there is no central air conditioning. We've read that Miz Schott was a bit of a penny pincher, but damn woman, certainly you could have afforded to run some air conditioning ducts so that your terlit gurl didn't have a damn heat stroke scrubbing all eight of your poopers in the hot and humid dog days of August.

Given that his house has a whimsical exterior, elegant bones on the interior and a fair amount of privacy making acreage surrounding it, we imagine that some steel magnate or rubber executive with a big bonus will scoop this place up and let his wifey who likes to decorate with floral fabrics have her wicked ways with it. Not only does Your Mama recommend that the new owner hire a nice gay decorator (and they surely exist in Cincinnati), we also strongly encourage anyone who buys the place burn a few pounds of sage to get all Miz Schott's joo-joo out of the house.

Wouldn't it just be purr-fect if a homosex black Jewish person bought this house? Your Mama would love that!