Have you ever wanted to live in a Swiss chalet? A Japanese pagoda? What about a Dutch windmill or a 1920s Gothic-inspired ballroom? In Silver Spring’s National Park Seminary, dozens of quirky historic buildings are being restored and transformed into single-family homes, townhouses, and condos.

The buildings on the campus-like grounds were built between the 1890s and the 1920s when the property was used first as a summertime resort and then as a girls’ finishing school. Following World War I, the Army annexed the property and converted it to a medical facility, and it remained an extension of Walter Reed Army Medical Center through three wars. The Army left by the 1970s, and the campus and buildings fell into disrepair.

You’ve decided to update a room in your home. Now what? Ignore your first instinct to call an interior designer and try the bookstore or Internet.

Where: 12414 Glen Road, Potomac
Listing Price: $3,500,000
Time on the Market: one month
Bedrooms: five
Bathrooms: seven

Details: This estate was featured on an episode of HGTV’s Dream Home series and in Oprah’s O at Home magazine. Built in 2002, the contemporary offers a great room with 28-foot cathedral ceiling, limestone floors, and two fireplaces. There is also a library with Brazilian cherry floors; a master bedroom with a cathedral ceiling and two covered decks; an exercise room; a home theater with stadium seating for 14; a recreation room with a kitchenette; and a home-automation system that controls the security system and heating and cooling. Set on more than four acres, the house also has a three-car garage, hot tub, and pool with fountains.

In the August issue of The Washingtonian, Michael Tardif writes about this dazzling renovation in Bethesda. The owners were planning to redo their kitchen when they realized the new design would outshine the rest of their late-1950s split-level. So they began thinking about a whole-house makeover.

Where: 4847 Rockwood Parkway, NW
Listing Price: $9.5 million
Time on Market: three weeks
Bedrooms: six
Bathrooms: ten

Details: This 16,000-square-foot estate sits on one of DC’s most prestigious streets in the leafy Spring Valley neighborhood. The design was inspired by a home in the Hamptons that once belonged to the Guggenheim family. Both are considered “French eclectic” and made of natural stone, stucco, cobblestone, and clay.  

The floorplan features a two-story foyer, walnut floors in the living room, his and her master bathrooms, a library, a wine cellar, an indoor basketball court, a spa with a sauna and steam room, an exercise room, a home theater with stadium seating, and a game room. Outside, there are two- and three-car garages, a heated pool, a hot tub, and a pool house with a full bath and kitchen.

Several foreign countries have looked at the home as a possible ambassador’s residence. They would be in good company—Rockwood Parkway is also home to NBC’s Tim Russert and Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth and power lawyer Brendan Sullivan.

More pictures below. 

Glenn Kelman thinks Washington is the perfect market for his tech start-up, Redfin. “It’s a city full of rich nerds,” he says. And Internet-savvy “wonks” are exactly what his site thrives on.