See the 50,000-square-foot Gilded Age mansion at the center of a billion-dollar bankruptcy

The mansion's history begins in Gilded Age opulence and ends in a billionaire's fraud arrest.

Located 25 miles from New York City in Mahwah, New Jersey, the Crocker-McMillin mansion was last occupied — in the months before his 2023 arrest — by former-billionaire Miles Guo, now jailed and awaiting sentencing on a federal fraud and racketeering conspiracy conviction.

According to court filings, Guo's wife asked a real estate agent if the landmark property had any ghosts before he bought it for $26 million.

If it does, they are a disparate crowd — from the waltzing guests of a railroad fortune's heir to the prayerful pupils of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, who lived and studied at the mansion from 1926 to 1984.

It was a wealthy widower's retreat, though not for long.

George Crocker was a childless, 46-year-old widower and fabulously wealthy when he began construction in 1902. The five-year project cost $2 million, a fortune in those days.

One of the richest heirs of the Gilded Age, Crocker had cash to burn. He inherited $6 million as the son of Charles Crocker, cofounder of the Central Pacific Railroad.

Architect James Brite modeled Crocker's home on Bramshill, a British castle built in the early 1600s, using red Harvard brick and ornately sculpted Indiana limestone for the exterior.

"Constructed with steel beams and concrete floors, the building is practically fireproof," a news story from 1926 enthused.

Then called Darlington, the mansion was made for entertaining.

With 21 bedrooms and its original, lushly landscaped 1,100 acres — the estate has just 12 acres now — Darlington was built for entertaining.

Crocker's guests could hike the property's woodlands, peer into a large lily pond shadowed by Japanese cherry trees, fish from a lake stocked with 4,000 trout, and watch their host's prized horses train and race along his trotting track.

Inside, guests could feast in a spacious dining room walled in California redwood and warmed by a white marble fireplace.

The party could then retire after dinner to enjoy cigars in the mural and gold-leaf trimmed library, or shoot pool in the billiards hall, before decamping to any of the 21 bedrooms.

Fifteen servants' rooms filled the third floor, and the next day's bouquets were kept fresh inside a refrigerated flower room off the entrance hall.

The home is 'rich in carvings wrought by hand.'

"No private house in the United States, perhaps, is so rich in carvings wrought by hand out of solid wood," a 1912 feature in The Architectural Record notes of Crocker's vast, H-shaped mansion.

The most elaborate carvings graced the two-story Great Hall, lit by the pair of Tiffany silver chandeliers that still hang from its coffered ceilings.

The new mansion featured amenities that, back in 1907, were state-of-the-art. Steam boilers ran their then-novel heating system. There were laundry machines, a central vacuum system, elevators, a telephone switchboard, and even ice cream freezers, all powered by electricity.

Can't play? A 'player pipe organ' did the job.

The Great Hall's most curious feature — powerful enough to rattle the white oak wainscoting — survives today. It's a 30-foot player pipe organ, built by the Aeolian Company of New York City, already a requisite for the Gilded Age mansions of the Carnegies, Fords, Mellons, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers.

The colossal machine is one of only a handful of such organs left intact and functioning in its original location.

Those without musical skills could insert an "organ roll" — a long, perforated paper scroll much like those for player pianos — from Aeolian's catalogue of 2,000 compositions, and let the towering instrument do the rest.

Crocker built, but only briefly enjoyed, his mansion.

The mansion's first owner would have little time to enjoy the halls and grounds of what was then called, simply, "Darlington."

Crocker died of stomach cancer at age 54 in late 1909, barely two years after moving in.

A second wealthy family then took up residency.

Following Crocker's death, Darlington was purchased in 1912 for $1 million by another wealthy man, Emerson McMillin.

A noted banker, art collector, Civil War veteran, and philanthropist, McMillin avidly promoted the natural sciences and education. (He was a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and contributed money to Commander Robert Peary's polar expeditions, among other ventures.)

McMillin would enjoy the property for a decade.

He and his wife, Isabelle, threw lively picnics for local Sunday schoolers and lavish parties for friends at Darlington, one historian, a former vice rector of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, told a local newspaper in 1982.

The second owner died because 'the pushing and shoving was too much.'

McMillin often traveled between Darlington and Wall Street, and this commute would spell his end, the vice rector recalled. The banker died as a result of being crushed by a crowd on a New York City subway train.

"The pushing and shoving was too much, and one of his ribs was fractured," the vice rector recounted. "He reached home safely but never recovered. Pleurisy, then pneumonia set in."

McMillin died in 1922 at age 78, at his beloved Darlington.

Nearly turned into a country club, the property became a seminary instead.

McMillin's grandson sold the estate to a group of political and sports figures who'd hoped to turn it into a golf and country club before their plans went belly up.

Darlington was repurchased in foreclosure by the McMillin heirs and lay empty for four years before it was sold for $478,000 to the Archdiocese of Newark. In April 1927, the inaugural class of 75 seminarians moved in.

The Archdiocese used the Great Hall as a chapel, its altar installed at the base of the massive stone fireplace, The New York Times reported in a story about the seminary's 50th anniversary.

"I have so much work to do that I'm so tired at night and I really don't have time to enjoy the plush surroundings," the Rev. Edward J. Ciuba, then the seminary's president-rector, told the paper.

"Besides," he added, "the chimneys are all blocked and none of the fireplaces work."

It provided a pastoral setting for the Catholic seminary.

Why Mahwah?

"The idea was that priests should not go to school near secular temptations, like there would be in a city," Monsignor Robert Wister, author of a history of the seminary, told The Patch in 2011.

"Mahwah was the furthest thing from civilization you could get!"

After 56 years, the Archdiocese sold the property to real estate developers Darlington Associates, which built more than 400 luxury homes on much of the land.

The empty mansion deteriorated for years, until 2008, when Darlington Associates sold it for $8.8 million to Ilija Pavlovic, owner of Christie's International Real Estate of Northern New Jersey.

A New Jersey real estate executive came to the rescue.

Pavlovic spent seven years carefully saving what became known as the Crocker-McMillin mansion, upgrading the plumbing and mechanical systems and restoring its Gilded Age beauty.

Italian woodworkers — whose labors also grace the Italian Parliament and New York City's Ritz-Carlton and Waldorf Astoria hotels — were brought in to restore the decorative carvings, including on the grand staircase, where the original Musketeer-like figurines still stand at wooden attention atop the balusters.

Restoring the wood was a monumental effort, given that the entire first floor is paneled in oak, cherry, walnut, and redwood. "It's a miracle that they can take a sample of a finish of wood 100 years old, and get the exact same look as the original," Pavlovic told the Toronto Sun in 2017.

A quarter-century later, Pavlovic's improvements survive. According to a 2017 story in NJ.com, these include the home's current energy-saving windows, 19 new bathrooms, a wine room and wine cellar, and a professional kitchen that can serve 250 meals at a time.

Pavlovic's improvements included a spa and lap pool.

Pavlovic's improvements include a spa and lap pool, a beauty salon, a gym, a poker room, and a cigar room.

He expanded the mansion by some 12,000 square feet, adding a fourth floor and increasing the total size to its current 50,000 square feet.

Outside, the real estate executive built two new fountains, a tennis court, an eight-car garage, and another pool with a neighboring cabana. The Yugoslavian-born businessman did not live there full time, instead using it for parties and events.

"This is something special," the new owner said.

Pavlovic had lived in Mahwah after immigrating to the US in 1988, he told the Sun. He'd always wondered about the Darlington property.

When he found the 1912 issue of The Architectural Record magazine, detailing the mansion's hand-wrought splendors, he was hooked, he said of his decision to buy and restore the property.

"I said, 'This is something very special,'" he told the Sun.

Still, he added a second kitchen to make the place cosier.

"You can cook eggs and be with your family in the smaller kitchen, or you can have Great Gatsby parties and cook for 250 people in the restaurant-style kitchen," he said.

He restored the mansion to its Gilded Age opulence — adding a comfy spot for movie nights.

In 2017, the real estate executive listed his newly restored mansion for $48 million, a sale he brokered himself.

Custom-made furnishings, down to the plush white couches in the newly-built movie theater, were included in Pavlovic's asking price.

Pavlovic's listing with Christie's International Real Estate boasted that he'd hired more than 200 artisans, craftsmen, and other professionals to update each room.

It took four years and a significant price drop before the home found its next owner: Miles Guo, who purchased it for $26 million in December 2021.

A new billionaire owner moved in, then out — to jail.

As the Crocker-McMillin's seventh owner, Guo had big plans for the property, though they were quickly dashed.

Just two months after acquiring the mansion, Guo filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from his many creditors.

Federal prosecutors say that despite his bankruptcy and debts going back four decades, Guo spent $18 million of his fraud victims' money outfitting the place. A million dollars alone was spent on Persian and Chinese carpets.

Guo was arrested in early 2023 and convicted of defrauding his business investors in 2024. He forfeited the mansion's title to his bankruptcy estate later that year. The home remains listed for sale at $19 million; the proceeds will help pay some $1 billion in debt claims.

"Come own a piece of history," the listing invites.