[3][6][7] After Mason's marriage in 1817 to Elizabeth "Betsey" Clapham Price of Leesburg, Virginia, he began building Huntley as a secondary home against a hillside overlooking Hybla Valley and the Potomac River on his Hunting Creek tract between 1820 and 1825.

[3] Huntley never served as a permanent residence for Mason, who owned a number of houses in Alexandria including Colross, his chief homestead.

[7] Twenty years after Mason's death, his widow Betsey attempted to sell Huntley and its accompanying Hunting Creek farm in 1859.

[3][7] Once the property was transferred to Mason's sons, Huntley was held as security on a debt to a family friend, Dr. Benjamin King.

[6][7] Frank Mason rented Huntley to George W. Johnson, a Union sympathizer, for two years beginning on 1 August 1860.

[6] During the American Civil War from December 1861 through February 1862, the 3rd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment camped at Huntley, with their quartermaster and his wife residing in the mansion.

[6][7] Also during the war, the Masons defaulted on their loan, and Dr. King eventually acquired Huntley at a public auction on 12 June 1862.

[7] Six years after Dr. King purchased the estate, Albert W. Harrison and Nathan W. Pierson from New Jersey assumed Huntley's title on 21 November 1868 and divided their claim in 1871.

During the Nagels' brief period of ownership, the couple commissioned Arlington architect Edward M. Pitt to make drawings of the mansion.

[3] The second story of the central section is crowned by a mousetooth brick cornice that once marked the edge of the mansion's clipped roof.

[3] The mansion's front entrance is framed by three-paned sidelights separated by slender reeded pilasters and surmounted by a fanlight with wooden tracery.

[3] Set slightly into the brick of the house, the windows still consist mostly of their early glass, and single panel shutters vented by fixed louvers.