Pioneer Point, Maryland
place in Maryland, United States
Pioneer Point, also called Hartefeld Hall and Hartefeld House, is a Georgian style house and surrounding 45-acre estate near Centreville, Maryland, on Maryland's Eastern Shore lying on a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Corsica and Chester rivers. The property is owned by the Russian Government as a recreational place for its diplomatic staff in the United States and activities there are protected under diplomatic immunity.
History
Pioneer Point is the former estate of wealthy business executive, and builder John J. Raskob who is best known for building the Empire State Building in New York City. Raskob constructed the 19 room mansion originally known as "Hartefeld Hall" after purchasing a 1600-acre tract of land on the Eastern Shore in 1925. Raskob later built another large house nearby to accommodate his 13 children.
After Raskob's death in 1950, the estate was subdivided and the mansion changed hands several times - at one point it was owned by millionaire industrialist R.J. Funkhouser.
In 1972, the property was bought by the Soviet Government, with subsequent Soviet additions to the property being funded by granting two properties in Moscow to the United States State Department.
In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the property came under ownership of the Russian Government, with the property valued at $3 million at that time. In 2007, the property was likened to a dacha by Yuri Ushakov, the Russian ambassador to the United States.
On December 29, 2016, Russian access to the site was commuted in the wake of the alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 United States presidential election as part of a number of sanctions taken by the United States against Russian diplomatic personnel.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pioneer Point, Maryland” as place in Maryland, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as place in Maryland, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28155651. Authority coordinates are 39.078, -76.144. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1600, 1925, 1950 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pioneer Point, Maryland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.