Sofia Coppola Lists NoLita Loft and Buys West Village Townhouse

SELLER: Sofia Coppola
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $2,750,000
SIZE: 1,771 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In late August last year (2011), after two shorties born our of wedlock, French rocker Thomas Mars—the front man for the band Phoenix—finally made an honest woman of Oscar-winning American filmmaker Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Somewhere) in a low-key but high fashion ceremony at Palazzo Margherita, her famous father Francis Ford Coppola’s 19th century mansion in southern Italy. Although the couple and their couple of  enfants live primarily in Paris Miz Coppola has maintained the same downtown New York City condo for the last ten (or so) years but, as we learned late last night, recently decided to let it go and put it up for sale with an asking price of $2,750,000.

Property records show Miz Coppolla purchased the mid-floor corner residence on the once gritty now fashionable border between SoHo, NoLiTa and Little Italy in September 2002, towards the tail end of her marriage to film, television, commercial and music video director Spike Jonze who was born with the far less edgy and arty sounding Adam Spiegel.

Listing information shows the vaguely L-shaped, loft-like residence measures a modest for a gal of her means 1,771 square feet with two bedroom suites situated for maximum privacy at opposite corners of the mid-floor condo.

A key-lock elevator offers direct entry into a wide foyer that funnels into an window-wrapped open plan main living space with 11-plus foot ceilings, 10 over-sized windows that offer a stunningly direct view of the ornate cupola atop the famed Police Building, medium brown wide-plank hardwood floors, and white-white walls perfect for displaying artwork.

The kitchen revolves around a large center island with snack counter and includes white Shaker-style cabinetry topped with honed black marble counter tops, white subway tile back splash, a complete suite of high-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances including a wine cooler, an enviable walk-in pantry, and separate laundry room.

Miz Coppola’s master boo-dwar offers a long entrance hall off which open a windowed marble bathroom with separate tub and shower, a custom-fitted walk-in closet larger than some Manhattan studio apartments, and an east-facing bedroom with wide bank of windows and a capiz shell chandelier that we happen to know was custom made for Miz Coppola by the hardworking hands of Bespoke Global designer and internet entrepreneur Gwen Carlton.

Property records indicate Miz Coppola owns a number of other properties in the U.S., including but not limited to the building where Café Zoetrope is housed in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood and a condo she scooped up in June 2007 for $500,000 located on a particularly busy and loud strip of Ocean Drive in Miami’s South Beach.

As it turns out, as reported by both Curbed and the Wall Street Journal Miz Coppola and Mister Mars just dropped a very-celebrity $9,895,000—more than a million bucks over the $8,800,000 asking price—on a wedge-shaped, five-story, three-unit West Village townhouse. As currently configured, according to listing information, there’s a 4 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom triplex garden unit with three fireplaces and gigantic backyard plus two additional full-floor flats on the upper levels. It’s not clear if Miz Coppola and Mister Mars plan to reconfigure and recombine the three apartments back into one nearly 6,000 square foot single family house.

 listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

Vincent Gallo Lists Multi-Level Downtown L.A. Loft

SELLER: Vincent Gallo
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,599,000
SIZE: 4,300 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last night while watching those designing dervishes on Project Runway run around and snatch (or pay for) the clothes off the backs and asses of regular folks roaming around Central Park minding their own damn bizness, we received a brief missive from amiga and informant Babbling Babette who let us know that wild-eyed indie film actor, artist, musician, avant garde self promoter, and somewhat freaky-creepy bon vivant Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66, The Brown Bunny) hoisted a soaring penthouse loft in a nitty-gritty industrial area east of downtown Los Angeles, CA on the market with an asking price of $2,599,000. The penthouse has been on and off the market since February 2011.

Quixotic, exotic and erotic-minded Mister Gallo, a man who makes himself available through his website “to fulfill the wish, dream, or fantasy of any naturally born female” for a fee of $50,000 plus expenses per night (and to “couples of the lesbian persuasion” at $100,000 per night), purchased the the 4-floor penthouse in October 2009 for $2,340,000.

Despite that wacky (if oddly gripping) photo studio tableau with the naked male mannequin torso it was clear at first glance that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota had been all up in there where her Wand of Decorative Generica. And indeed, according to a well-positioned little birdie, Mister Gallo never inhabited the 2 bedroom and 2.5 building topper, which we’ve been told he leased briefly to Nic Cage, and the furniture does not belong to him. Mister Gallo, we understand, has much less conventional (and far more interesting) taste in comestibles and day-core.

The main entrance to the penthouse, as seen in the above floor plan (lowest level on top), is on the lowest level where wide entrance hall opens into giant, window lined flexi-space suitable for use as a work/office space, art studio, indoor roller rink, Pilates studio or any just about other purpose a person could think of. It could also very easily be carved up into two decent-sized bedrooms with a shared hall bathroom. Experienced and eagle-eyed floor plan will note—and the lazy and the infirm with appreciate—the penthouse conveniently offers residents and guests a physical exertion saving private elevator that serves all four floors of the penthouse. 

The first flight of stairs, a rather prosaic affair compared to the cacophony of floating M.C. Escher-esque staircases that wrap around and cut across the soaring upper levels, leads up to the main living/dining area where over-sized copper-framed windows with long city views punctuate two walls of the schoolyard-scaled room. Both the living/dining room and the adjacent separate kitchen open to an unusually ample if not entirely private wrap around terrace, part of which listing photos shows gussied up as an outdoor movie theater, a fun idea that we imagine might easily annoy the neighbors.

A momentary elevator ride or a long cantilevered flight of floating stairs brings us to the lofted master suite, a sprawling balcony that hangs over the primary living space below. The spacious room has lots of romance and drama but it does not offer so much as a lick of privacy, not even in the attached bathroom where a clear glass panel is all that divides the bedroom area from the shower. This set up is absolutely fine if you don’t have children or house guests who could probably hear every whisper and creak in the bedroom from below not to mention would need to traipse through the bedroom to access the stairs that climb up to the roof top terrace. Of course, all the domestic traffic could just take the elevator up to the roof terrace, but still…. Call Your Mama a secretish prude if you like, but we just prefer more rather than less privacy when it comes to the boo-dwar.

Anyhoo, an all-glass pavilion on the roof opens to a large square terrace with all but unobstructed 360-degree views. Mister Gallo, his nice, gay or lady decorator or Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota furnished the roof terrace with a comfy-looking super-sized sectional sofa with nearly two dozen pillows but nary an umbrella in sight to keep the fair-skinned and sun averse from baking like potatoes in the searing southern California sunshine.

We do not, of course, know a cow teat from a tit mouse but an unscientific perusal of public property records suggest to Your Mama that Mister Gallo may (or may not) have had some sort of working relationship with the developer of the Biscuit Company Lofts, a direct hand in developing the downtown building, and/or an uncontrollable real estate urge to invest in the project. Our interpretation of the property records show Mister Gallo has owned a total of six units in the Biscuit Company Lofts complex as well as a lofty 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom condo in the building across the street he bought in February 2009 for $350,000. In addition to the for sale quadruplex penthouse that now encompasses and an adjacent 626 square foot unit on the seventh floor he bought separately from but at the same time as the penthouse for $300,000 Mister Gallo owned a ground floor space he sold for $510,000 to musician Eric Erlandson, co-founder of Courtney Love’s old band Hole, a fifth floor unit bought in October 2008 for $280,000 and sold two months later for the exact same price, a second fifth floor unit bought in April 2007 for $675,000 and sold at a substantial loss in February 2011 for $380,000 and, finally, a 2,926 square foot seventh floor duplex spread he sold in July 2010 for $1,300,000.

Mister Gallo has in the past also owned a wide variety of architecturally significant homes and apartments on both the east and west coasts including a couple condos at the star-studded Sierra Towers complex in West Hollywood (one he sold to Cher!), the soo-blime John Lautner-designed Wolff House tucked dramatically into the hills just above the Sunset Strip, and at least one condo in Richard Meier’s exhibitionist-friendly (and celebrity-stocked) green glass and white steel towers that lord over the busy West Side Highway in New York City’s far West Village and have dead on views up and down the Hudson and across to New Jersey.

listing photos: Keller Williams / Hollywood Hills
floor plan: Biscuit Company Lofts

Thursday Catch Up: Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson

Several days ago Your Mama discussed The Wong House, a low-slung, Buff & Hensman-designed mid-century modern residence in Los Angeles that recently divorced Tinseltowners Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson purchased for $2,900,000 just a few short months before they split in late 2010 and just this week flipped back on the market with a $3,650,000 price tag. It was whispered to Your Mama this morning by trusted informant Mirakle Mike that ex-Missus Reynolds lived in—or, more accurately, stayed at—the house after the couple busted up.

Newly released listing photographs—snapped in a glittering, city-view twilight—show the 2 bedroom and 3 bathroom post and beam abode has been altered little (if at all) since the former couple bought it in August 2010. The long sweep of glass-walled and sparsely furnished rooms along the back of the house—the living room, kitchen, dining area and family room—contain a smattering of not particularly impressive but no doubt punishingly pricey mid-century modern(ish) things that include a teak credenza or two, a couple of classic Barcelona lounge chairs, a glass topped dining table surrounded by some Danish-looking teak chairs with black leather seats, and a pair of tufted leather bar stools in the kitchen area that look to Your Mama like they could have come straight out of The Dresden Room, an old school restaurant/bar-lounge in Los Feliz where the dee-voon sequin-clad duo Marty and Elayne have been warbling and working their high-camp stuff since the dawn of time.

Anyhoo, we were told by an informant we call Mirakle Mike that it was ex-Missus Reynolds who lived in the house after the couple split up although he thinks she’s not there much

listing photos: Keller Williams Realty / Beverly Hills

Thursday Catch Up: Daphne Guinness

SELLER: Daphne Guinness
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $14,000,000
SIZE: 4,118 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Settle down children, we are well aware we are well beyond fashionably late to this particular real estate party. Howevuh, Your Mama can’t resist us a nervy, couture-clad iconoclast heiress like Daphne Guinness, a deliciously outlandish woman who stands out like a peacock in pig sty amongst the more staid upper echelons of international high society in which she orbits and who pushed her chi-chi half-floor spread on New York City’s Fifth Avenue on the market in early January (2012) with a jet-setting $15,000,000 asking price. Miz Guinness subsequently and quickly dropped the price for her high floor residence at the hoity-toity Stanhope to $14,000,000.

The listing may not surprise glossy shelter publication readers who surely recall Miz Guinness had her New York nest photographed in all it’s colorful glory for the March 2011 issue of Architectural Digest.

The famously skunk-haired and gorgeous globe-trotter was born into great privilege as an heiress to the eponymous beer fortune and grew up in grand homes in England, Ireland and Spain. As a teenager—she was nineteen—she married wildly rich Greek shipping heir Spyros Niarchos with whom she has three all but grown children and as of a year ago, as confirmed by her fashion reporter friend Derek Blasberg in a February 2011 interview in Harper’s Bazaar, the adventuresome sartorialist was the lover of (very married) French philosopher Bernard Henri Lévy.

Anyhoodles poodles, her complicated sounding romantic life aside, property records show Miz Guinness acquired her Manhattan digs in late April 2008 for $11,459,000. Current listing information shows the common charges, which in this case include the taxes, run Miz Guinness $17,950 per month, an amount the well-worn beads on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus calculate total a downright intimidating $215,400 per year. At the same time she bought the half-floor apartment she also picked up a small ground floor apartment—possibly a guest room, art studio or staff suite—that comes with $1,677.28 monthly fees and that she also has on the market with a $1,500,000 asking price.

The Stanhope, a stately if somber limestone and brick edifice designed by preeminent New York architect Rosario Candela in 1926 stands directly across from the southern flank of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The building was converted to 26 (or so) luxury residences in the early- to mid-Aughts and offers its well-heeled residents white glove services (doormen, porters, valet parkers, etc.), a private library/conference room, access to the on-site (and very posh) La Palestra spa and fitness center, 24-7 concierge services accessible through a touch panel/video intercom, and wine storage space (plus sommelier recommendations and free delivery) at Acker, Merrill and Condit, a swank wine shop on the Upper West Side.

The floor plan included with current listing information (above) and on a still active website specifically designed to market the building’s apartments shows the 7-room residence measures a spacious but hardly gargantuan 4,118 square feet and includes a shared elevator landing that opens to an entrance gallery with discreetly located powder pooper and a near thirty foot long formal living room blessed with direct Central Park views and a wood-burning fireplace. The formal dining room connects to an eat-in center island kitchen through a butler’s pantry with walk-in wine closet and the small-ish three guest/family bedrooms each open off a 35-foot long, fully-mirrored corridor and include a private (windowless) bathroom.

The master suite, at the tail end of the corridor at the extreme rear of the residence, has an entry vestibule that promotes elegance and privacy, an almost square 350-plus square foot bedroom, and an infamous (and windowless) bathroom outfitted with double sinks, separate soaking tub and shower, and a completely enclosed (and hopefully well ventilated) cubby for the terlit and bee-day. The floor plan for the apartment shows the master suite was designed with two walk-in closets plus a separate linen closet. It would not surprise Your Mama in the least to learn that fashion obsessed Miss Thing converted the linen closet to a shoe closet and took over an adjacent bedroom and bathroom as a dressing room and additional closet space.

The aforementioned Architectural Digest article reveals Miz Guinness chose the apartment because of its high floor location and the natural light brought in from north- and west-facing windows. “North for drawing, west for sunsets,” she elucidated. On the recommendation of the building’s manager she met with and immediately hired smart and prodigiously talented Philippines-born architect Daniel Romualdez whose client list contains high brow, fortuitously born and accomplished women like Tory Burch, Marina Rust, and Aerin Lauder as well as maturing morning chat show hunk Matt Lauer and James de Givenchy, the gemstone loving jeweler nephew of venerated fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy.

Mister Romualdez was brought in to work over and neutralize some of the apartments stuffier interior elements and add in, as she esoterically spelled out in A.D., “…the shine of Metropolis, the modernity that should have happened, with the lush flora of Suddenly, Last Summer. But I didn’t want it to tip into English decadence. It had to be contained, controlled—intelligent decadence. What I wanted was sort of a savage modernism.”

This rejection of “English decadence” and re-injection of “modernity” and “intelligent decadence” to achieve “savage modernism” manifested in shimmering, explosive and decoratively dilettantish rooms hung thick with name brand contemporary artworks. High gloss ebony floors in the entry reflect a kaleidoscopic butterfly painting by Damien Hirst—may he rest in peace—and extend down an improbably lengthy, fun house-like mirrored corridor where the cherry red color of the rugs was matched to the exact same shade of polish Miz Guinness has custom mixed for her nails.

The glossy, coal black floors continue into the capacious park facing corner living room where scads of orchids and other house plants in terra cotta and Chinese pots and urns somehow make unexpected nice-nice with a boxy, blood red velvet sofa, a trio of sculptural light objects on the floor, a pair of mirrored Deco cocktail tables, and a variety of saturated and sometimes surreal photographs by blue chip picture takers like Gregory Crewdson, David LaChapelle and Bert Stern.

The original floor plan for Miz Guinness’ apartment did not call for a library but it appears Miz Guinnes either re-purposed the dining room or re-fashioned one of the bedrooms to include floor to ceiling bookcases filled with shadow-boxed insects, actual books, and a wall-mounted flat screen tee-vee, although we can hardly imagine Miz Guinness doing anything as mundane as watching the boob-toob. Propped up in the corner, there’s a giant photograph of herself snapped by her avant-minded friend David LaChapelle.

At least one of the guest bedrooms makes a courageous (if expensively kitchy) statement with the unlikely (and not entirely holy) marriage between some unusual but de rigueur Chinoiserie this and thats, walls sheathed in shimmering, high-glam silver mylar, dainty white linens on the bed and a cherry red rug on the luminous black wood floors.

Miz Guinness made all the real estate gossip columns back in the fall of 2010 when her downstairs neighbor—hedge hog Karim Samii and wife Tina—complained and sued over water damage caused by the frequent over-flowing of the Miz Guinness’ bathtub in the master bedroom. The Samiis reportedly sued for over a million bucks for repairs and “mental anguish.” We’re not sure of the status of the lawsuit but Miz Guinness told the folks at Arch. Digest last year she was “mending” the matter and we’ll just let the children speculate if all the legal ugliness has anything to do (or not) with her decision to sell so soon after settling in.

Miz Guinness reportedly maintains a flat in London. Probably she maintains or has access to homes in any number of other fabulous locales popular with the beau monde, places like St. Moritz, Mozambique and/or St. Barts. But to be honest, kittens, we don’t have any direct knowledge of such.

photos (interior): Thomas Loof for Architectural Digest
exterior rendering and floor plan: Corcoran

Fallen Financier and Politico Jon Corzine Lists Hoboken Penthouse at a Loss

SELLER: Jon Corzine
LOCATION: Hoboken, NJ
PRICE: $2,900,000
SIZE: 2,400 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Shaggy bearded and publicly beleaguered Wall Street financier cum New Jersey politico Jon Corzine, the much in the news subject of a recent profile in Vanity Fair, married for the second time in late 2010 to Sharon Elghanayan, a 60-something year old twice-divorced New York City-based psychotherapist (and “avid kickboxer“) who happens to be the wealthy ex-wife of Henry Elghanayan, a successful property developer and scion to a serious New York City real estate fortune. Mister Corzine and Miz Elghanayan wed, according to a November 2010 announcement in the New York Times, in a small ceremony in Mister Corzine’s Hoboken apartment, the very same penthouse it turns out he put on the market this week with a $2,900,000 asking price.

Mister Corzine hails from a farm in Illinois but his out sized and unfettered ambitions pushed him up through the ranks to eventually become the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs before he was unceremoniously ousted in 1999 by long-time rival Hank Paulson, who himself went on to become the controversial 74th Secretary of the Treasury who presided over the credit crisis and subsequent economic bailout in 2008 brought about by the implosion of the sub-prime mortgage business. But we digress. After leaving Goldman Sachs Mister Corzine, a long-time resident of New Jersey, quickly shifted gears from Wall Street to Capital Hill. He famously spent tens of millions of his own dollars to snag a seat as a senator for The Garden State. He served five of his six year term before he resigned to make a successful run at the governorship of New Jersey in 2006, a hard-fought election that cost him several more tens of millions of his own substantial (if diminishing) fortune.

Mister Corzine wasn’t the most popular governor and was defeated in his (brutally expensive) 2009 bid for re-election. Much to the surprise of many who follow the financial markets he returned bullish and bulldog-like to his Wall Street roots in March 2010 as the CEO and Chairman of MF Global, a struggling financial services concern that went belly up in October 2011. Mister Corzine resigned a month later and reportedly declined his twelve million dollar-plus severance package. That expression of largesse—or whatever it was—may or may not soften the sharp edge of reality that over a billion dollars of MF Global clients’ money remains unaccounted for and was determined in late 2011 by a committee convened by the U.S. Gubbamint to be unrecoverable. Ouch.

Mister Corzine may be in the dog house both professionally and in the eyes of the public but he’s also a fat cat with nine lives and Your Mama expects we haven’t seen or heard the last of Mister Corzine’s topsy-turvy adventures through the sometimes cruel arenas of politics and high finance.

Fascinatin’ as it all is, kittens, Mister Corzine’s roller coaster professional life isn’t exactly what bring us here together today but rather his recent residential real estate activities. For years Mister Corzine lived relatively modestly—at least modestly for a man of his monetary means—in and around the upscale New York City bedroom community of Summit, NJ. At some point he and his first wife Joanna, who together have 3 grown children, purchased a mansion on more than six ocean front acres in the impossibly pricey, farm-glam enclave of Sagaponack in the Hamptons. A bit more on that beach house later.

Property records indicate Mister Corzine owns (or owned) a large ski condo near Telluride, CO and in early 1998 he and his then-wife Joanne paid around $15,000,000 for a spacious duplex condominium (plus a small storage space and a private wine cellar) at the 43-story pre-war minded post-war tower at 515 Park Avenue. The quickly caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the 4,897 square foot duplex back on the market and sold it (and a small storage space and a private wine cellar) in August 2001 for $18,800,000 to music industry mogul Alan Meltzer who also quickly flipped the condo (and the wine cellar and the storage space) four months later at an $550,000 loss, not counting real estate fees and carrying costs.

We’re not sure where exactly Mister Corzine decamped after he divorced First Missuss Corzine (at great expense) in 2003 but there are scads of reports of him living in a rental apartment in the same Hoboken, NJ building as a woman named Carla Katz who would eventually become his live-in lady-pal and who would eventually receive a reported six million dollar-plus settlement after they split up in 2004.

Property records show that in November 2008, in the middle of his tenure as the governor of New Jersey, Mister Corzine coughed up $3,263,581 to acquire a penthouse condo in Hoboken, NJ, the one currently listed at $2,900,000 and occupying a prime, south and east facing corner atop the massive, multi-building Maxwell Place on the Hudson complex on the shore of the Hudson River.

A few quick flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus shows that even if Mister Corzine’s Real Estates manage to pull a real estate rabbit out of a hat and snag a full price sale, the former governor still stands to lose a whopping $363,581 not counting real estate fees, improvement expenses, and carrying costs that include just over $38,000 a year in taxes and another $1,700 per month—$20,400 per year according to our calculations—in common charges.

The Maxwell Place complex, just north of Hoboken’s main (and cute) commercial drag Washington Street, offers residents access to a grassy riverfront park and walkway, a landscaped roof top terrace with Manhattan view, swimming pool and spa, extensive fitness facilities, 24-hour concierge services, a free shuttle to the PATH station, and a private resident’s only club with game room, screening room, business center and lounge with plasma tee-vee and fireplace.

 Listing information shows Mister Corzine’s Hoboken crib spans about 2,400 square feet and as it’s currently configured contains 2 bedrooms—one of which appears to be wee and windowless—and 3.5 bathrooms.

The main living/dining room has delish, dark stained walnut floors, 10-foot ceilings, pale creamy beige walls, two long walls of floor-to-ceiling windows with wide river and New York City views, and a Manhattan-side balcony just big enough for an Hibachi, a lawn chair or two, and a cocktail table. What was probably once a bedroom is now a fully-outfitted if compact media room with built-in entertainment center/system with bar, a full wall of south-facing windows, and a slippery-looking brown leather sectional sofa. The smaller, windowless room next door does have (an also windowless) attached bathroom and makes, we imagine, a not a particularly gracious guest bedroom.

The butch-y galley-style kitchen, situated just behind the living/dining room with direct access from the breakfast area and entrance hall, has dark espresso-colored full-height Shaker-style cabinets, manly brown (or black) marble counter tops, fancy fixtures, and a complete suite of stainless steel Viking brand appliances.

What was once a guest/family bedroom with en-suite bathroom was incorporated by Mister Corzine into the master suite and utilized, as per listing photos, as large office/den with head on Empire State Building view and direct access to both the bedroom and the closet-lined dressing hall that in turn provides access to a pair of small but luxuriously fitted bathrooms with more espresso-colored cabinetry and black marble counter tops.

Some of the penthouse’s extra added amenities, according to listing information, include a stacked stainless steel washer/dryer set, one deeded parking space in the building’s indoor garage, and Lutron dimmer switches and a pre-installed Bose sound system throughout.

We, of course, don’t know a bell pepper from a police raid, but Mister Corzine’s decision to sell his Hoboken bachelor pad may have something to do with his new wife Sharon Elghanayan’s rather impressive real estate portfolio. In addition to a full-floor apartment on New York City’s fancy-pants Fifth Avenue—located, coincidentally, just downstairs from financier turned hot shot art dealer Bob Mnuchin who, back in the day, was one of Mister Corzine’s mentors Goldman Sachs—property records show in August 2006 New Missus Corzine dropped $7,000,000 to buy a 1.72 acre estate with swimming pool and tennis court on the same scenic seaside lane in East Hampton, NY where a number of other high profile high flyers own houses including the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Candice Bergen, Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz, billionaire Mort Zuckerman, financier Carl Icahn, and domestic diva turned media mogul Martha Stewart, just to name just a few.

Now then, let’s circle back to that major estate in Sagaponack (shown above) that Mister Corzine and First ex-Missus Corzine Joanne bought sometime in the 1990s. The mostly flat 6.64 acre estate sits at the bottom of Gibson Lane—that same Gibson Lane on which Billy Joel used to own a couple of houses and where, when we still lived in New York, Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter sometimes took our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly to frolic in the sand and surf.

Anyhoo, their divorce settlement granted ex-Missus Corzine deed and title to the lavish and gated estate that then encompassed 6.64 landscaped acres and included a 6,165 square foot main house with 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms, separate guest house, tennis court and beach side swimming pool.

Ex-Missus Corzine famously (and with much publicity) leased the estate from Memorial Day to Labor Day 2009 for a stroke inducing $900,000 to billionaire Henry Silverman and sold the property in a private deal the following June (2010) to billionaire Wall Streeter David A. Tepper who shelled out $43,500,000 for the property. Mister Tepper, bless his heart, felt the view from the lower level of the house was not adequate so proceeded to knock down every stick of the various structures and dig up almost every inch of landscaping except for the high hedges and shrubbery that rings the perimeter of the property in order to replace it with a custom-built 15,000 square foot cedar-shingled two-story Georgian beach house with sunken tennis court and better views. If we’ve said it once we’ve said it 89 times: Such are the gravy train real estate ways of the super-rich.

listing photos and floor plan: Halliburton Homes

Nip/Tuck’s Dylan Walsh Divorces and Lists Former Family Home in Hollywood

SELLERS: Dylan Walsh and Joanna Going
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,425,000
SIZE: 2,480 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in December 2010 all the gossip glossies and celebrity-obsessed blogs reported that Nip/Tuck hunk Dylan Walsh filed for divorce from his actress-wife of 7 years Joanna Going. Less than a year later Mister Walsh revealed to the people at People that his new, unnamed lady friend gave birth to a baby girl in late September (2011), his fourth child with three different women. Mister Walsh’s personal life certainly ain’t none of our bizness but for anyone who might care (and like to pass moral judgement) there’s one kid with second wife—that’s Miz Going—who gave birth in 2003 almost a year before they were married in 2004 and two shorties with first wife actress Melora Walters who gave birth to their first child just about a month after they were married in 1996. As our last college roommate and on-again/off-again confidante Sheila Sinn told Your Mama recently, “Life is complicated and sometimes things gets messy.” Indeed, they do.

Given the state of things with the Walsh-Goings it’s no surprise to anyone who understands The Four Ds of Real Estate* that the (soon to be?) divorced former couple have put a $1,425,000 asking price on their once happy family home in the very same upscale pocket of Hollywood that L.A. real estate people sometimes call Sunset Square and where Oscar-winning filmmaker Dustin Lance Black paid $1,455,000 in September 2010 for a 2,866 square foot 1924 Tudor (with detached garage converted to office space/guest house) and actress/style maven Selma Blair and her fashionista baby daddy Jason Bleick just this week put her/their house up for sale with a $1,780,000 price tag. Reality star turned mass market fashion designer turned interweb entrepreneur Lauren Conrad also owns a Spanish casa in the centrally located ‘hood she bought in early 2008 for $2,360,000, no longer lives in, and has had on the market since September 2011 for $2,250,000.

*The Four Ds: Death, Divorce, Debt and Diapers. Generally (and unscientifically) speaking, four of the top reasons residential real estate is bought or sold, particularly by the notoriously real estate fickle rich and/or famous who are, let’s be honest, more likely in a better monetary position to buy and/or sell a house every time they make a baby, dump their spouse and/or pass a God damn kidney stone.

Anyhoo, Miz Going’s big Showbiz break came in the mid-1980s, then in her early twenties, on the long ago canceled soap story Another World. She went on to a number of tee-vee series (Dark Shadows, Going to Extremes) in the early 1990s before becoming a fairly busy bit part gal in a long list of television series (Spin City, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Close to Home) and made for boob-toob movies (Chasing a Dream, My Silent Partner). Miz Going has also been seen a couple of times on the silver screen (Tree of Life, Wyatt Earp).

Lantern-jawed and hairy chested Mister Walsh has also been catting around Tinseltown since the late 1980s and early 1990s when he appeared on a number television series like Kate & Allie and Gabriel’s Fire with James Earl Jones. A long slog through the1990s and early Aughts brought in a lot of jobs in little-remembered movies and various television series but Mister Dylan’s persistence (no doubt in tandem with his good looks and firm physique) finally paid off when he hit the big time in 2003 with a starring role as the existentially conflicted and often naked plastic surgeon Dr. Sean McNamara on the Emmy-winning series Nip/Tuck. In 2010, the same year Nip/Tuck was canceled, Mister Walsh starred on the big screen in Secretariat and he currently works his hard-bodied and often exposed stuff on the police procedural Unforgettable.

In November 2003, nearly a year before they sealed their love in the eyes of God and government in October 2004 and right about the time she gave birth to the their daughter, the now erstwhile couple coughed up $1,315,000 to purchase a flat-fronted, two-story Mediterranean style residence in a leafy ‘hood smack between the Sunset Strip to the west and the touristy, stripper wear boo-teek-lined heart of Hollywood to the east.

Listing information shows the 2,480 square foot Mediterranean was originally built in 1923, extensively renovated by the current owners—that would be Miz Going and Mister Dylan—and contains a 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms plus a detached garage converted to a guest/nanny suite with bathroom.

The landscaping at the front of the house looks a little bit Grey Gardens in a mostly good way that Your Mama thinks playfully (if unintentionally) thumbs its figurative middle finger at the preponderance of obsessively-manicured yards in Los Angeles’ more expensive zip codes. An unexpectedly spacious foyer, plenty big enough to house an antique-looking baby grand piano and large-scale faux-Rothko, has lustrous inky black wood floors softened with cement-colored walls and re-sharpened with gleaming high-contrast white trim work around the windows and doors. The front foyer, like the rest of the dwelling’s lower level, lacks any sort of ceiling molding. Some of the children will undoubtedly see the lack of moldings as cheap, inexcusable, wretched (and retch-worthy) while others will see it as an acceptable architectural/decorative conceit that lends the vintage house a pared down contemporary aspect.

Although much of the “day-core” appears to have been stripped away in the not especially formal “formal” living room it retains a distinct (and decidedly ho-hum) Shabby Chic-ness with lots of white slip-covered furniture and a distressed star sculpture-thing hung above the wood-burning fireplace at the far end of the room. Get it, y’all? A star over the fireplace in the home of a couple of relatively low-wattage but bona fide stars? Pleeze. But whatever. Two sets of French doors open the long and narrow living room to a small deck that extends off the front of the house and was constructed thoughtfully around a pretty, thick-trunked and somewhat inconveniently located tree.

The chandelier-free dining room takes a delightful turn from the expected with a round (instead of rectangular) table for six or eight and opens directly into the somewhat compact but expensively equipped kitchen complete with top-grade stainless steel appliances, snow white Shaker style cabinets with glass-fronted uppers, polished concrete counter tops (or what appear to be polished concrete counter tops), and a sizable center work island with convenient veggie sink and single-stool snack counter.

Upstairs two family/guest bedrooms overlook the back yard and share a hall bathroom while the master suite, sparely but floridly dressed in white-washed and antique silver furniture and billowy white linens, faces the street. The over-sized frameless glass shower enclosure in the roomy attached bathroom injects a sleek modern edge to an otherwise vintage-inspired space with white subway tiles and free-standing soaking tub. The master bathroom, finished with some rather yummy looking jet black stone tile floors that would be even more delectable if equipped with radiant heat, also has double sinks and an exposed terlit set not particularly privately all but next to French doors that open to a Juliet-type balcony that overlooks the street. We’re down with the bathroom’s mixy-matchy vibe we just think it’d be a bummer to have to do the dirty bathroom bizness next to that window, especially at night when lights could cast embarrassing and incriminating shadows on the windows….

French doors in both the kitchen and the adjacent, teal-colored den/family room lead out to a dining deck shaded by a bougainvillea-draped trellis. The decks steps down to an oval-shaped salt water swimming pool sunk into a pale flagstone terrace surrounded by thickets of slightly unkempt-looking drought tolerant shrubbery. Heaven knows, no one loves an oval swimming pool more than Your Mama or über-agent Sue Mengers—may she rest in peace—but this one just seems a bit too big for the limited backyard area. Were this our pool to put in we might have opted for something slightly smaller (but still oval) and, natch, The Dr. Cooter would insist on the installation of a sunken spa, maybe one cut into the thin tip of the oval nearest the back fence.

Your Mama happens to like this part of Los Angeles—it has a walkability factor many neighborhoods in Lala Land lack—and the property seems, in our humble and entirely meaningless assessment, well priced right for the market given that the most recent transfer in the ‘hood was just down the block in December 2011 when, according to property records, fashion designer Linda Loudermilk sold her 3 bedroom and 2.75 bathroom 1923 Tudor (with detached guest house) for $1,380,000. 

listing photos: Sotheyby’s International Realty / Los Feliz

Divorced Duo Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson List Former Love Nest in Los Angeles

SELLERS: Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,650,000
SIZE: 2,835 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In August 2010, just over two years after their hush-hush wagon hitching ceremony in some tiny town in British Columbia (Canada), comely movie stars Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds acquired The Wong House, a single story 1969 wood and glass contemporary located in the celebrity-stocked Los Feliz area of Los Angeles and designed by much-beloved California architects Buff & Hensmen.

This was, celebrity real estate watchers readers will recall, just a couple short months after Miz Johansson finally managed to unload her humongous house in the Hollywood Hills at a pocketbook punishing three million dollar loss; She had paid seven million for the 7 bedroom and 7 bathroom Mediterranean manse in the low-key but star-studded Outpost Estates ‘hood in May 2007 and sold in June 2010 for just $4,000,000.

Anyhoo, a few very short months after Mister and then-Missus Reynolds purchased their love nest in the upscale hills above Hollywood their high-profile romance swirled down the Tinseltown Terlit of Love. Their divorce (reportedly) became final in June 2011 and now, more than half a year later finally time, the time has come to divide their community assets that include (and may or may not be limited to) their mid-century modern hideaway which where not sure they every actually occupied as a couple and has just popped up the (open) market with asking price of $3,650,000.

A couple of quick and unscientific calculations on our bejeweled abacus shows that’s a whopping 30 percent more than they paid for the property less than 1.5 years ago. The price increase likely takes into account the eco-friendly restoration and upgrades added to the house in the last year that include the incorporation of solar power.

Listing information shows the newly gated and video secured post and beam abode sits on a .44 acre triangular shaped lot with sprawling views from downtown to the beach, measures 2,835 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and an attached 2-car garage with convenient direct access.

Plans for a second story addition are available according to current listing information.

A long row of full-height windows extends almost the full width of the rear of the house from the “formal” living room at one end, past the updated and upgraded open kitchen, beyond the dining area to the den/family room. Listing information indicates the L-shaped residence also includes a library, indoor laundry room,  and a private master suite complete with secluded walled garden and outdoor shower.

The back of the house opens to a deck that extends out towards the salt water swimming pool and steps down to flat grassy yard that encircles the swimming pool and includes an elevated built-in fire pit with curvaceous built-in bench seating.

After Mister Reynolds listed his modest if not exactly inexpensive bachelor pad in the nearby Outpost Estates neighborhood in the summer of 2011 with a $1,599,000 price tag—he paid $1,715,000 for the 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom canyon and city view crib in October 2007—Your Mama thought maybe he planned to remain in residence at The Wong House. Alas, Mister Reynolds took his Outpost Estates digs off the market in early November (2011), a decision that may or may not have something to do with the recent listing of The Wong House.

As far as we know Miz Johansson continues to own an approximately 1,200 square foot New York City penthouse with stunning city view terrace that property records and previous reports reveal she snapped up in April 2008 for $2,100,000.

No word on the house in the rural Louisiana farm the couple allegedly purchased in the spring of 2010 and (allegedly) updated and upgraded with all the eco-friendly accoutrement a green-thinking celeb can conceive of and afford.

listing photo: Keller Williams Realty / Beverly Hills

Divorced Duo Ryan Reynold and Scarlett Johansson List Former Love Nest in Los Angeles

SELLERS: Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,650,000
SIZE: 2,835 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In August 2010, just over two years after their hush-hush wagon hitching ceremony in some tiny town in British Columbia (Canada), comely movie stars Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds acquired The Wong House, a single story 1969 wood and glass contemporary located in the celebrity-stocked Los Feliz area of Los Angeles and designed by much-beloved California architects Buff & Hensmen.

This was, celebrity real estate watchers readers will recall, just a couple short months after Miz Johansson finally managed to unload her humongous house in the Hollywood Hills at a pocketbook punishing three million dollar loss; She had paid seven million for the 7 bedroom and 7 bathroom Mediterranean manse in the low-key but star-studded Outpost Estates ‘hood in May 2007 and sold in June 2010 for just $4,000,000.

Anyhoo, a few very short months after Mister and then-Missus Reynolds purchased their love nest in the upscale hills above Hollywood their high-profile romance swirled down the Tinseltown Terlit of Love. Their divorce (reportedly) became final in June 2011 and now, more than half a year later finally time, the time has come to divide their community assets that include (and may or may not be limited to) their mid-century modern hideaway which where not sure they every actually occupied as a couple and has just popped up the (open) market with asking price of $3,650,000.

A couple of quick and unscientific calculations on our bejeweled abacus shows that’s a whopping 30 percent more than they paid for the property less than 1.5 years ago. The price increase likely takes into account the eco-friendly restoration and upgrades added to the house in the last year that include the incorporation of solar power.

Listing information shows the newly gated and video secured post and beam abode sits on a .44 acre triangular shaped lot with sprawling views from downtown to the beach, measures 2,835 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and an attached 2-car garage with convenient direct access.
Plans for a second story addition are available according to current listing information.

 A long row of full-height windows extends almost the full width of the rear of the house from the “formal” living room at one end, past the updated and upgraded open kitchen, beyond the dining area to the den/family room. Listing information indicates the L-shaped residence also includes a library, indoor laundry room,  and a private master suite complete with secluded walled garden and outdoor shower.

The back of the house opens to a deck that extends out towards the salt water swimming pool and steps down to flat grassy yard that encircles the swimming pool and includes an elevated built-in fire pit with curvaceous built-in bench seating.

After Mister Reynolds listed his modest if not exactly inexpensive bachelor pad in the nearby Outpost Estates neighborhood in the summer of 2011 with a $1,599,000 price tag—he paid $1,715,000 for the 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom canyon and city view crib in October 2007—Your Mama thought maybe he planned to remain in residence at The Wong House. Alas, Mister Reynolds took his Outpost Estates digs off the market in early November (2011), a decision that may or may not have something to do with the recent listing of The Wong House.

As far as we know Miz Johansson continues to own an approximately 1,200 square foot New York City penthouse with stunning city view terrace that property records and previous reports reveal she snapped up in April 2008 for $2,100,000.

No word on the house in the rural Louisiana farm the couple allegedly purchased in the spring of 2010 and (allegedly) updated and upgraded with all the eco-friendly accoutrement a green-thinking celeb can conceive of and afford.

listing photo: Keller Williams Realty / Beverly Hills

Super Producer Brian Grazer Buys Big Digs

BUYER: Brian Grazer
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $12,500,000
SIZE: 10,285 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Not too long ago we heard from Our Fairy Godmother (O.F.G.I.S.M.) in Santa Monica who snitched with some shock and awe that Oscar-winning and spikey-haired super-producer Brian Grazer had, in early December 2011, dropped $12,500,000 on a sprawling, many-winged (and lobster-shaped) mansion in Santa Monica, CA.

It wasn’t that O.F.G.I.S.M. found it at all odd or bedfuddling that Mister Grazer coughed up well over twelve million clams on a monstrous mansion that is, by Your Mama’s unsolicited and somewhat snotty assessment, in desperate need a full-scale make-over. That is, let’s be honest, par for the real estate course for Showbiz power players like Mister Grazer. What O.F.G.I.S.M. marveled about, rather, was that the Santa Monica estate, not quite a mile and a half from the beach, had been listed on the open market back in late 2007 with a magnificently higher price tag of $22,500,000. Eventually the price tag plummeted to $16,500,000 and in fall 2011 the property was made available as a partially furnished lease at a rate of $28,000 per month.

Did Mister Grazer snag a great real estate steal, if twelve and some million bucks for a single family house can ever really be considered a steal? Or was the original price tag for the meticulously maintained but wan-looking spread was laughably bullish? Or, looked at from a slightly different angle, did Mister Grazer pay too much given that the most recent sale of any property that backs up the the manicured expanse of the The Riviera Country Club was back in October 2010 when a stately but also tired and significantly smaller Elmer Grey-designed 1926 Tudor on 1.2 acres—much of its utterly soo-blime original woodwork intact but screaming for an overhaul—went for $7,700,000? Your Mama will let the children, from those with real estate expertise to those with an entirely uninformed opinion, hash out the consensus with their commentary.

The almost two acre estate, privately situated behind electronic gates and a dense thicket of mature trees on a sometimes busy but particularly purrdy boulevard, backs up to the ritzy and celeb-friendly Riviera Country Club and measures 10,285 square feet according to listing information kindly forwarded to Your Mama by O.F.G.I.S.M. The spacious, two-story streamlined traditional—an architecturally unsatisfying and decoratively démodé dwelling by Your Mama’s humble and meaningless opinion—was built in 1990 and contains 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces, garage bays for five cars that encircle a parking-lot sized motor court, and a separate guesthouse.

The architectural and decorative tone(s) for the interior spaces are set straight away in the airy, origami-like foyer where chunky stone pillars anchor towering walls of glass, where honey-colored wood floors have a strangely directional inlay, and the heavy-duty staircase curls around a small pond with rock sculpture and climbs to a serpentine bridge that cuts confusingly through the voluminous space and connects the various wings on the upper level of the house.

Entertaining and living areas include, according to listing information, formal living and dining rooms, den, library/study, media room, and a temperature controlled wine and booze cellar with stone floor and walls lined almost floor to ceiling with individual bottle cubbies. Family quarters include a separate breakfast room and soaring double-height, five-sided center island kitchen with a bulbous, super-sized greenhouse window. The kitchen area connects over a compact, L-shaped snack counter to a long, narrow and voluminous family room area with wood floors and massive stone-faced chimney breast.

The fully-landscaped, notably private and tree-shaded back yard has a meandering, dark-bottom lagoon-like swimming pool bordered by behemoth boulders, a waterfall or two, tropical-looking plantings and a sunken swim-up bar with curvaceous counter top that mimics—blah blah blah—the serpentine bridge that winds through the various double-height spaces inside the house. A broad, sinuous lawn stretches back from the house and terraces towards the bluff’s edge where a snaky stone terraces hangs over the unnaturally green golf course. Your Mama is not big on golf course fronting properties—we have zero interest in golf and even less interest in being seen by golfers as we sunbathe in our booze bloated birthday suit—but the geography here sits the house and back yard well above the golf course for maximal privacy and scenic views over the golf course towards the rugged Santa Monica mountains that rise ruggedly to the north and west.

Just before their summer 2007 divorce, Mister Grazer and his now ex-wife writer/reality show host Gigi Levangie Grazer (The Starter Wife, The Arrangement) listed their sprawling Cliff May-designed ranch-style mansion in Pacific Palisades with an asking price of $27,500,000. The superstar-style 9 bedroom and 14 bathroom compound finally and famously sold in March 2009 for $17,550,000 to fast reproducing Tinseltowners Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.

Mister Grazer has owned a mock-Med ocean front mansion in Malibu with 5 bedrooms (plus an elevator, indoor swimming pool and beach front gym) in the exclusive, guard-gated Malibu Colony community that he bought in 2003 and first and unsuccessfully attempted to unload in the spring of 2007 when it carried a $16,000,000 price tag. At some point—we’re not sure quite when—he took the property off the market but re-listed the three-story residence last year, in May 2011, with a higher—and rather nervy—asking price of $19,500,000. The nearly 7,000 square foot beach shack (above), according to Redfin, was taken off the open market just before Jesus’ birthday and just a couple weeks after he closed on his new house in Santa Monica but still appears in all its ocean front luxury on the listing agent’s website.

listing photos (Santa Monica): Sotheby’s International Realty
listing photos (Malibu): Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency

Actress, Style Maven and New Momma Selma Blair’s Hollywood House Up For Grabs

SELLER: Selma Blair
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,780,000
SIZE: 2,918 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Anyone who knows any thing at all about real estate knows there are four main reasons a person—specifically a person of substantial financial means—sells a house and/or buys a new one: death, divorce, debt and diapers, otherwise known in the property bidness as The Four Ds.

Given that actress and celebrity style icon Selma Blair (Kath & Kim, Hellboy, Legally Blonde) had a baby last summer—an out of wedlock boy-child with her much-tatted and adventuresome fashion designer man-beau Jason Bleick—it’s not much of a surprise then that this week she hoisted her house in a leafy section of Hollywood on the (open) market with an asking price of $1,780,000.

Property records show Miss Blair paid $1,315,000 for the fully modernized 1922 bungalow in November 2004, shortly after she hitched her marriage wagon to now ex-husband Ahmet Zappa, the actor/writer son of iconic artist/musician Frank Zappa.

Anyhoo, listing information for Miz Blair’s fully-fenced and high-hedged house, tucked in to a leafy, upscale pocket of Hollywood where the foothills turn to the flats, shows there are 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 2,918 square feet of almost entirely white interior space with matte, milky white walls, lustrous milky white painted wood floors and scad of cabinets, entertainment units and bookshelves all painted—you got—milky white.

The west-facing, courtyard-like front garden—turned out more like a back yard, perhaps, than a conventional front yard—has a wee patch of grass dotted with a random assortment of concrete stepping stones that link the front walk gate to the deep and wide covered front porch perfect for whittling away shaded afternoons. An impossibly narrow gated driveway hidden by a towering hedge runs up along the opposite side of the property and in between there’s a dining terrace and a small, elevated concrete spa (or fountain) with cantilevered wood bench.

From what Your Mama can surmise, Miz Blair’s Hollywood digs lacks a proper front door opting instead for two sets of wood-framed glass doors that open from the front porch directly into the main L-shaped living space divided into a sparely furnished foyer/lounge area with fireplace (and Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Couch) and a homier family room/den with a full wall of built-in cabinets with flat-screen tee-vee.

A separate office/library has built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with actual books, some sort of antler chandelier, and lots of windows that include wood-framed glass doors that make classic California indoor-outdoor living easy with direct access to the covered front porch and front yard.

Frosted glass panels divide the foyer/lounge area from the dining room where a built-in buffet offers both closed storage and open shelves for art, objet and book display, and a wide wall of wood-framed glass doors open to the backyard. The adjacent sky lit (and all-white) kitchen has snow white cabinets and counter tops, a huge center island with veggie sink, under-counter wine fridge and snack bar, cute little cookbook cubby, a pantry/storage wall with integrated flat-screen tee-vee, and a full complement of commercial style stainless steel appliances.
The master suite, privately situated at the extreme rear of the residence, has a second fireplace, chunky built-in cabinet at the foot of the bed from which a flat screen tee-vee rises at the touch of a button, a small but cozy sitting area with built-in window seat and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves—filled, again, with actual books—and a pair wood-framed glass doors that open to the backyard. A crisp all-white bathroom is anchored by a black floor and kitted out like a five-star hotel with high double sinks, separate make-up vanity, soaking tub and separate stall shower.

Rooms at the back of the house connect to a graphically-minded backyard where a tree-shaded concrete dining and lounging terrace steps down to the grass and gravel lower level where a cushioned, built-in concrete sofa bench makes a sharp right angle around a built-in concrete fire pit.

As for Baby Daddy Bleick, property record show at just about the exact same time in April 2006 he sold a ho-hum house in his hometown of Huntington Beach (CA) for $750,000 he dropped a $1,275,000 wad on an 1,873 square foot, city view mid-century modern residence on quiet cul-de-sac in the star-studded Oaks neighborhood where high profile residents/property owners include Brad Pitt, Christina Ricci, Justin Long, Kevin Spacey, and Mitch Glazer and Kelly Lynch who own a spectacular John Lautner-designed house

In a 2009 interview in Coast magazine Mister Bleick revealed he had leased his house and was then living in a teepee somewhere—we’re not sure exactly where—five minutes from the beach.  However, we suspect now that’s he’s got a youngin in diapers and a stylish celebrity baby momma—and, no doubt, a thousand dollar Bugaboo—he’s given up teepee living for the time being.

No word on where Miz Blair and Mister Bleick plan to decamp but iffin we were the betting type, and we’re not, we’d wager they’ll stick to the artsy-fartsier east side areas of Los Angeles but eventually settle into a larger, more kid-friendly residence with a big(ger) backyard.

listing photos: The Agency

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