Designed by architects Brown and Von Beren and dubbed Lucerne Mansion, the nearly 18,000-square-foot estate on 3.3 acres overlooking Lake Whitney was built in 1906 for Frederick D. Grave Sr. and his family. Mr. Grave was a German immigrant who arrived in America in 1861 and ultimately established a family business in cigars, F.D. Grave & Son, in New Haven.

In 1960, the Grave family sold the mansion to prominent architect Eero Saarinen, who at the time agreed to serve on the faculty at the Yale School of Architecture. Saarinen famously designed the iconic Gateway Arch in St. Louis, among other nation-wide projects. He remodeled the mansion and added 6,000 square feet in the rear of the building to better utilize the space for his new architecture firm. Unfortunately, Saarinen died in 1961 at age 51 before ever occupying the building he had transformed. Saarinen's associates, architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, housed their architectural firm in the mansion until the property’s sale to Hamden Hall in 2019. 

Editor's Note: Five members of the extended Grave family attended Hamden Hall Country Day School over a four-decade span – from the 1940s through the late 1970s. Pictured on the couch, from left, are past parent Frederick “Fred” Grave III, his grandson Frederick V, and son Frederick Grave IV, Class of 1972, who is married to Sally Guyott, Class of 1973. Mr. Grave also sent his daughter, Dorothy Grave Hoyt, Class of 1979, to Hamden Hall.