Petersgaard is one of 12 estates that were created when Vordingborg Cavalry District was sold at auction in 1774. Estate No. 12 was given the name Kalhave and sold to the merchant and shipowner Peter Johansen. He renamed it Petersgaard and constructed a main building on the land in 1776-1780. He created a thriving agricultural estate and also established a dockyard, which was given the name Petersværft.
Changing owners
Peter Johansen died on the estate in 1798, and his heirs sold it to the Crown the following year. The Crown embarked on the process of implementing the agricultural reforms of the time on the estate. Petersgaard, without the surrounding forests, was sold to Jacob Bentzon Resch. It was difficult times for Danish agriculture, and he had to sell the estate in 1810. The new owner was Christian Wulff, a grandson of Peter Johansen. He sold it to MichaelConrad Fabritius de Tengnagel, the occupant of the Iselinske Fideikommis, who refurbished the buildings. His widow, Nana Felicia Augusta Fabritius de Tengnagel, née Bilsted, stayed on the estate after his death in 1849 and married Hans Ditmar Frederik Feddersen in 1855. In 1864, the year after the death of her second husband, she sold Petersgaard to Peder Brønnum Scavenius. It was passed on to his son of the same name after his death in 1868.
In 1870, Scavenius' son sold it to the wealthy merchant Ole Bernt Suhr, who had already purchased the Petersgaard forests from the state two years earlier. On his death, Petersgaard was passed to Jørgen Peter Bech, husband of Suhr's eldest daughter Caroline Charlotte Suhr, who was himself out of a wealthy family of landowners. In 1885, Petersgaard was ceded to Caroline Charlotte Suhr younger sisterIda Marie Suhr, She was part of the clientel that met at Brøndums Hotel in Skagen each year and socialized with artists such as Michael and Anna Ancher, the violinist Karen Falck and her husband Gustav Falck and Jenny Falck. Ida Marie Suhr never married. She therefore endowed Petersgaard to her relativeJens Juel, a grandson of her sister Sophie Clara Anna Suhr and Frederik Vilhelm Treschow of Krabbesholm. On his death in 1949, Petersgaard passed to his son Knud Rudolf Iuel.
Architecture
The Neoclassical main building consists of two storeys above a raised cellar and has a hipped tile roof with two chimneys. The facade has a three-bay median risalit tipped by a triangular pediment. A small, one-storey annex with thatched roof projects from the north side of the building. It is known as Little Petersgaard and dates from 1850.
