“I just love old houses,” she says with a laugh. “I’m deeply attracted to ruins.”
Owners of a primary residence in tony Georgetown, as well as famed Long Island mansion Grey Gardens, Quinn and Bradlee are especially fond of Porto Bello, their weekend retreat in Drayden, in St. Mary’s County.
Purchased 20 years ago, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, but by the time Quinn and Bradlee came upon it, it was “a bit of a wreck,” they recall, complete with a caved-in roof, rotting floors, peeling plaster, and one side completely torn off. Nevertheless, they took one look and said, “This is it. This is our new house.”
Situated on what was once a portion of the first land grant recorded in the province of Maryland, Porto Bello was one of the state’s nine original manor houses.
The mid-18th-century “four over four” (four rooms upstairs and four downstairs), built by William Hebb II, sits on 204 acres—which Quinn and Bradlee have bought in parcels over the years—with sweeping views of the St. Mary’s River.
With the help of Bethesda architect Stephen Muse, Quinn and Bradlee were intent on renovating, yet, at the same time, preserving the integrity of the house and the landscape.
“The house had been empty for about five years,” Bradlee recalls, but neither he nor Quinn found the restoration a daunting prospect. “We weren’t scared of an old house.”
Indeed, a contractor advised them to tear the place down and start anew, but, as Quinn says, “Then it wouldn’t have been an old house.”
Restoration took about a year, during which time the couple, along with their now-adult son, Quinn, lived on the property in a one-room cottage they’d already renovated. Structurally, a porch that had been dismantled was replaced, and a kitchen and sunroom added, but care was taken to keep the proportions of the home intact.
“We wanted to restore the house to its original beauty,” say the couple.
Quinn says she enjoys thinking of the people who’ve lived in the house in years past. “There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of those people, their lives, and their history.”
That sense of history has been passed down to Quinn and Bradlee’s son, an amateur archaeologist who “loves to dig,” say his parents, and who has found numerous arrowheads on the property, which was once the site of a Native-American village.
The couple both point out that the home isn’t particularly large or fancy, which suits them just fine.
“We didn’t want this to be a museum,” says Quinn. “It’s cozy and friendly.”
Indeed, the comfortable space is just that: a well-lived-in family home decorated in a traditional style by Quinn herself and furnished with pieces that have come down through both their families for generations, such as the Windsor chairs once owned by Bradlee’s family, and a painting of Cleopatra’s Barge, America’s first deepwater sailing yacht, built by one of Bradlee’s ancestors.
Among Quinn’s other family favorites in the home are sketches drawn by the 16-year-old son of a Bradlee ancestor, as well as a collection of Canton china used as ballast on ships the Bradlee family sailed.
On the house’s river side, the Bradlee family’s seafaring tradition is reflected not only in paintings and memorabilia—such as an antique wire ship perched over the living-room fireplace—but in the palette selected, as well.
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