Golden Teak Transforms Derelict Thai Mansion

The columns — 50 of them, each 9 meters, or 30 feet, tall — are the structural support for the house, built with scholarly precision in the Lanna Thai style.

Lanna kings ruled much of the region beginning in the 13th century, and the wealthy and powerful of the empire built their mansions with wood from the abundant forests between the modern-day city of Chiang Mai and what is now the border with Myanmar.

Most prized was golden teak, which is what covers the exterior of Mr. Nathanson’s 1,580-square-meter, or 17,000-square-foot, house — not the golden teak farmed today in China for high-end flooring but the far denser, richer and more lustrous original variety that Thai legend says actually contains gold dust.

Mr. Nathanson, 46, the self-avowed “black sheep” of a New York family of attorneys and brokers, is happy to pass on such details from the encyclopedic knowledge of Lanna history he acquired during five years of restoration work on the house, which he has put on the market for $1 million.

A 40-minute drive from Chiang Mai International Airport in the rapidly developing district of Maetaeng, the house was an abandoned ruin when Mr. Nathanson and his wife, Sukanya, who is Thai, came across it by accident during a trip from their island home in Phuket.

Construction was started in 2005 by what Mr. Nathanson refers to as “a very rich and very powerful local family,” but stopped abruptly in 2006 after then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, one of the region’s best-known native sons, was deposed in a military coup.

When the Nathansons first saw the house, it was so overgrown that the only thing visible from the road was the characteristic chofa, a kind of feather-shaped finial adorning the peak of the roof. Virtually all the exterior teak had been stripped off and carted away by thieves.

Nonetheless, it was love at first sight, say the Nathansons, who have built or restored several properties in Thailand, including a temple-style, multi-building compound on the beach in Phuket.

They purchased the Maetaeng house at a bank auction, outbidding a relative of the original owner who had made a low offer because, as Mr. Nathanson said, “I don’t think they expected that anybody would be crazy enough to take this on, especially a ‘farang,”’ the Thai word for Westerner.

The restoration has been undertaken with obsessive attention to traditional style, including consultations with Ajarn Chulathat Kitibutr, an architect and Lanna scholar who designed the Four Seasons resort in nearby Maerim. A 15-member crew worked full time during the height of the project, employing traditional Lanna tools and tongue-and-groove construction, using no nails.

The couple’s energetic son, six-year-old David, is so fluent in Thai from his studies at the village school a five-minute drive away that he has been translating his father’s instructions to workers.

Characteristically, the house’s ground floor is a little more than 3.5 meters off the ground, as protection from flooding, which is rare in this area, and from wild animals, mostly feral cats and dogs.

Up a flight of teak stairs, the main floor is a vast expanse of gleaming wood surrounded by windows — 140 in all in the house — that open onto a 50-meter-long deck on the north side, with terraces to the south and east.

A spiral staircase leads to three large bedrooms, each 48 square meters, with en suite tiled bathrooms, one of which has a teak tub.

When work began, “I still had money, so we got a lot accomplished in the first three years,” said Mr. Nathanson, who once owned a successful textile factory in California.