SELLER: Lenny KravitzLOCATION: New Orleans, LA
PRICE: $775,000
SIZE: 1,725 square feet, 1 bedroom, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen puppies, we don't need to hear any crap from y'all today about our lack of discussion yesterday. Not only did our San Francisco-based b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau work our last nerve all damn weekend with her regrettable ways that, we're sorry to say, continued right into Monday, we had trouble at the airport last night and we lost our stoopid iPhone. Needless to say, Your Mama is in a sour mood today. Okay?
Anyhoodles, thanks to Mardigras Mary, a gal with her lacquered nail square on the pulse of the NoLa real estate scene, we learned over the weekend that high-heel boot wearing and man-purse sportin' musician Lenny Kravitz recently listed a home he owns in New Orleans, LA with a price tag of $775,000.
Although four time Grammy Award winner Mister Kravitz's salad days as a rock star were in the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, he still tours extensively around the world and in 2009 made his feature film debut in the Academy Award winning Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire. Mister Kravitz, for those who do not know, comes from a Hollywood family: He is the son of producer Seymour Kravitz and actress Roxie Roker (The Jeffersons). He also happens to be the second cousin on his mother's side of annoying Today show weatherman Al Roker and the ex-huzband of Lilakoi Moon, otherwise known as Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and A Different World, with whom he made a daughter, actress-singer Zoe Kravitz (No Reservations, The Brave One) who will soon be seen in on tee-vee's Californication and on the next installment of the X-Men film franchise.
Previous reports reveal that the celibate, spiritual and kinda kooky Mister Kravitz picked up his 220-year old Creole cottage in the Vieux Carré–aka the French Quarter–in May of 1994 after coming down to New Orleans to see Aretha Franklin work her thing at Jazz Fest. He liked the city so much he stayed and paid, according to property records, $360,000 for the narrow and modestly sized house.
Mister Kravitz, who fancies himself a bit of a designer, owns an eponymous design firm that has mostly done up the day-core for his own homes–including this one–as well as a recording studio at The Setai hotel and The Florida Room bar at the Delano hotel, both in Miami, FL. Some reports indicate Mister Kravitz and his team were hired to do over the day-core for a private residence in Portland, OR but we don't know nuthin' specific about that.
Listing information shows the house measures 1,725 square feet and includes just 1 bedroom and 2 poopers. The weathered exterior gives the house an unassuming look of abandonment that fits nicely with the historic neighborhood and belies nothing of the glitzy and glammy bachelor pad interior spaces that the New York Times once called 'bordello-modern.'
Mister Kravitz reportedly occupied the house for a number of years before he blew out the interior walls of the original cottage and inserted a very contemporary, cocoonish rock star style hideaway with few windows, exposed brick walls, a vaulted exposed beam ceiling, and gleaming ebony colored hardwood floors that bounce light around. The main living space includes a Lucite grand piano that once belonged to Ingrid Bergman, wing-backed chairs upholstered with zebra skins that match the zebra skin rug, eye popping shimmery silver wallpaper by Flavor Paper, a flat screen tee-vee mounted into a mirrored niche, an over-sized pink portrait of Billie Holiday, and a sizable sectional sofa with gleaming black material that looks like slippery alligator skin that would stick to naked thighs on a hot, humid southern summer day iffin the air conditioner were not cranked up to high.
Mister Kravitz sectioned off a small part the interior area for his bedroom and clean-lined private pooper. Overnight guests can be accommodated in a sleeping loft, accessible only by a built in ladder, that overlooks the main living area. Uh, no thank you. We'll take a hotel, please. Who wants to have to shimmy down a damn ladder to get to the terlit when nature calls in the middle of the night? Not Your Mama, that's who.
A small courtyard at the back of the property is described in listing information as "Metro Chic," a look that apparently calls for over-sized wicker patio furniture with white canvas cushions, a huge vaguely Asian glass top coffee table, some bamboo and lots of potted ferns. Your Mama is not sure if this is "Metro Chic"–or even what "Metro Chic" means–but what we do know is that the courtyard reminds us of the sort of place Your Mama's Momma, our foul-mouthed Auntie Jennie and their b.f.f. Carly-Ruth might have gone to back in the 1980s to gossip and down a few mai-tais.
Despite the obvious energy and deep thought that went into doing over the interior spaces of Mister Kravitz's new-fangled Creole cottage, Your Mama finds it over-sexed, recherché, and oddly impersonal, like a lobby of a hotel in South Beach. But then again, all of Mister Kravitz's homes that he's sold over the last few years have had Your Mama running and screaming for the exit.
Mister Kravitz has always been a collector of high-priced real estate but has recently sold off a number of his posh and nightclub sexy residences. Most recently he sold a doo-plex penthouse pad in New York City's SoHo neighborhood for $12,750,000 to preggers singer Alicia Keys and her baby daddy/fiancée Swizz Beatz. Prior to that, in July of 2009, he unloaded an exuberantly decorated waterfront house in Miami Beach, FL for $2,450,000.
According to many other reports and sources, Mister Kravitz currently owns an architecturally spectacular residence in Paris worked over in his signature sexy style, a rustic 50+ acre ocean front compound on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, and a somewhat remote 1,000-ish acre organic farm about 4 hours outside of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
listing photos: French Quarter Realty
