BUYER: Amanda SeyfriedLOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $1,909,218
SIZE: 1,585 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Given that child model turned in-demand young actress Amanda Seyfried is on record as disliking living in Los Angeles, it should come as no surprise that she opted to acquire her first home in downtown New York City.
According to the fine folks at Curbed New York, 24-year old Miss Seyfried–that's pronounced sigh-frid as far as we know–snatched up a condo crib at the recently re-worked Devonshire House building in Greenwich Village that had an asking price of $1,875,00. It don't take any flicking of the well worn beads of Your Mama bejeweled abacus to see that Miss Seyfried must have really wanted the damn apartment because, according to Streeteasy, she paid $1,909,218 for the apartment, otherwise known as more than the asking price.
The pretty pre-war Devonshire House, designed by the pre-war pasha Emery Roth and built in 1928, has long been a rental building of small but not inexpensive apartments. In 2008 the building was sold and the new owners converted the genteel old lady to a new-fangled condominium complex. The 12-story building now includes 24/7 doormen, concierge services, fitness facilities, a playroom for the kiddies, bicycle pen, on-site super, and refrigerated storage in the lobby. The interior spaces were all done over by talented and much-published designer Victoria Hagan, a kind of traditionalist who does a sophisticated, restrained and soft sort of contemporary style. The refreshing–or some might say ruination–of the original, deliciously gloomy and satisfyingly patinated Elizabethan style lobby has been a hot button issue for long time (renting) residents of the building.
Petite, flaxen haired Miss Seyfried, with her bee-stung lips, big ol' crazy wide-set eyes and an unreserved obsession with jeans, started up her ladder of fame as a child model. As a teenager she moved from still photos to soap stories (As the World Turns and All My Children) and in 2004, at the dewy age of 19, she got her big break in the movie bizness with a lead role in Mean Girls opposite the then white-hot teen queen actress Lindsay Lohan. Lawrd hunnies, not to get snarky or maudlin but how bad does that poor, sad, jail-going and frequently rehabbing Lindsay Lohan wish she had Miss Seyfried's career right about now?
Since Mean Girls, Miss Seyfried has successfully careened from the small screen (Big Love, Veronica Mars) to the silver screen (Letters to Juliet, Chloe) and earned herself a spot at the big gurls' table with all the other budding young powerhouse actresses in Tinseltown like January Jones (Mad Men), Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine, Brokeback Mountain) and that sourpuss Kristen Stewart (the Twilight saga).
Along her professional way, according to the interweb, Miss Seyfried has gone steady with with a number of (semi) high-profile and arty-farty young men including actor Emile Hirsch (Milk, Speed Racer, Into the Wild), scruffy musician Jesse Marchant, and British actor Dominic Cooper her co-star in the successful but unfortunate Mama Mia!. Listen, kumquats, Your Mama just doesn't understand why these Hollywood types can't just leave near genius alone because, well, they're always ruining it with their sequels and stoopid adaptations of really good books. Seriously, it just makes Your Mama's blood boil. Anyhoo, that's another beef for another blog really so lets move on to the real estate matter at hand.
Part of Miss Seyfried's self-confessed reason for moving to New York was that she was dating London-based actor Dominic Cooper and New York is hours by plane closer to London than Los Angeles. However, that romance has swirled down the terlit of young love and Miss Seyfried was (allegedly) seen over the weekend–dressed in a dog costume–canoodling with well-formed actor Ryan Phillippe at both Kate Hudson's annual Halloween bash at her Pacific Palisades, CA mansion and later at CAA agent Todd Feldman's party in Bev Hills.
In March of 2010 Miss Seyfried told Vanity Fair magazine she took certain silly romantic comedy roles in order to be able to afford to buy an apartment in New York and the Greenwich Village apartment she suffered through Letters to Juliet to buy measures just over 1,500 square feet and includes two bedrooms and 2 poopers, both of which are, Your Mama is happy to report, blessed with windows.
While we find the location of the laundry facilities off the entrance hall awkward and we're not thrilled with the amount of square footage devoted to the traffic hub between the living and dining room, we do love how the apartment is open from front to back with large windows that allow light to penetrate deep into that dastardly traffic hub.
Typically Your Mama isn't down with kitchens open to dining rooms. We do not want to look at the damn toaster while trying to enjoy a plateful of scallops for dinner nor do we want to have to watch our imperious house gurl Svetlana huff, puff and scrub pots and pans while we're tucking into a dollop home made salted caramel ice cream sitting on a brownie made from a box. You know what we're sayin'? Never the less, the open plan dining room/kitchen works in this apartment, at least in part because the kitchen feels discreetly tucked away from the living room. If there is anything worse than having to listen to the damn dishwasher during desert it's trying to relax in the living room when looking directly at dirty dishes in the sink.
Anyhoo, the two bedrooms are sufficiently separated off separate corridors and share only one short wall, and even that is buffered by a couple of closets. The adequate not not particularly generously sized master bedroom includes a walk in closet and a private pooper with a stand up shower that looks plenty large enough for two or more.
In at least one interview, Miss Seyfried mentioned that she was making some renovations to her new apartment so Your Mama hasn't a clue whether any of Victoria Hagan's handiwork still exists or if it's been ripped out to make way for the work of a nice, gay decorator of Miss Seyfried's choosing.
Whatever the case, it's a lovely first (multi-million dollar) apartment for a sophisticated young actress in a swank location on Greenwich Village Gold Coast. It's not what Your Mama might choose for two million clams. We might have chosen something like this iffin we had the dough left over to make a number of immediate modifications like to do away with that ridiculous glass wall between the master bedroom and pooper. Even though it's a smaller apartment that the one Miss Seyfried chose and not as central of a location, we're a sucker for a small terrace with views of the the Hudson. That's why, as some Real Estates Your Mama knows often say, "There's a lid for every pot, a seat for every ass."
Your Mama's most trusted real estate spies tell us that Miss Seyfried still, whether she likes it or not, maintains a residence in Los Angeles where she rents an admirably modest for a successful actress apartment in a particularly pretty building the Beachwood Canyon neighborhood.
listing photos and floor plan: Stribling New York
