The 100-acre (0.40 km2)[2] site included a plantation house (completed in 1900) and private cemetery, and was located on the Wilmington River, about 3.5 miles (6 kilometers) east of the Savannah colony.

[4][5] On his new estate, Bowen began to grow soya beans, then known as "Luk Taw" or "Chinese vetch", from which he made soy sauce and vermicelli noodles.

He suspected that the sprouts of his plants had antiscorbutic properties that would be of use to the British Royal Navy in their fight against scurvy, research that led to his receiving a gold medal from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 1766[6] and a gift of £200 from King George III.

[7] The following year, Bowen received a patent from the British government for his "new invented method of preparing and making sago, vermicelli and soy from plants growing in America, to be equal in goodness to those made in the East Indies".

[4] Greenwich Park Association became the new owners in 1887, and its director, Canadian-born Spencer Proudfoot Shotter,[11] a naval-stores magnate, bought it outright in 1896.

)[13] In 1898,[1] Shotter began building a Beaux-Arts mansion which had double colonnades, 28 columns on three sides, each measuring 28 inches in diameter and more than twenty feet tall.

[4] Shotter lost his fortunes (and was jailed for three months)[16] after becoming embroiled in an anti-trust lawsuit[17] and sold the property to Doctor Henry Norton Torrey, a brain surgeon from Detroit.