SELLER: Whoopi GoldbergLOCATION: Marlboro, VT
PRICE: $2,300,000
SIZE: 6,100 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The smock-wearing, always outspoken and passionately opinionated comedienne and chat show hostess Whoopi Goldberg has been much in the news the last few weeks for taking publicity-seeking possible presidential candidate Donald Trump to task on The View for his relentless obsession with the circumstances of president Barak Obama's birth.
While all that is as fascinating as it comes, what currently concerns Your Mama more than the hilarious spectacle of Mister Trump's political posturing are the real estate doings of the Oscar, Grammy, Tony, (Daytime) Emmy, Golden Globe, Image, Kid's Choice and People's Choice award winning actor/activist/agitator/comedienne/writer/producer/talk show host Whoopi Goldberg.
Sometime in 2004 Miz Goldberg snatched up a sprawling farm in the rural and gorgeous Green Mountains near the southern Vermont community of Marlboro. Marlboro, about four hours north of New York City, may seem like Hicksville or Bumfuckegypt to some city sophisticates but the rolling hills are no stranger to high-culture: The world-famous Marlboro Music Festival is held in, well, Marlboro. Iffin Your Mama is being honest–and we always are–we'd confess that we really haven't any idea how much cash Miz Goldberg coughed up for her country hideaway, often referred to in online marketing materials as the Robinson-Winchester Farm.
In the fall of 2009 the dread-lock tressed Miz Goldberg–born the much more prosaic Caryn Elaine Johnson–listed her 3,600 square foot Wooster Street loft in New York City's SoHo with a price tag of $3,990,000. The 2 bedroom spread, filled to the gills with a stunning collection of artworks by African American artists–sold more than a year later in January 2010 for $2,985,000 to Emily and Ben Lerer. We don't know a damn thing about Missus Lerer but we do know that Mister Lerer is a budding internet media mogul who founded the deeply metrosexual cool-hunting site Thrillist.com and happens to be the off-spring of Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer.
Right about the time Miz Goldberg listed her loft in lower Manhattan she laid out $2,800,000 for a stately mansion with 8 bedrooms and 6 full and 2 half bathrooms in the historic and exclusive Llewellyn Park enclave in West Orange, NJ.
All went quiet on the Whoopi Goldberg real estate front until two days ago when a gal named Vernice Vermontite directed our celebrity real estate attentions to Miz Goldberg's country bolthole in southern Vermont she has on the market with an asking price of $2,300,000
Big Momma ur-gossip Cindy Adams reported back in 2009 that Miz Goldberg owns "an 8,000-acre farm in Vermont." And maybe she does. However, the Vermont property Miz Goldberg currently has on the market near Marlboro spans, according to listing information, 745 acres and includes 640.7 acres of conserved land–that means it can never be developed–67 acres of pasture land, 15 miles of groomed horse and buggy trails and a 22-acre sugar bush. A sugar bush is not, contrary to how it sounds, a naughty lady part but rather a stand of trees tapped for the production of Vermont's famous maple syrup.
Portions of the farm's main house date back to the late 1700s and the original structure–a simple two-room cabin–has been added on to several times. The Colonial crib, with it's plain but dignified exterior, now measures around 6,100 square feet and includes, according to listing information, 4 bedrooms and 3 full and 2 half bathrooms. Listing information states that the house was "meticulously renovated by Whoppi [sp] Goldberg in 2004." The residence was taken down to its bare bones and rebuilt in a manner that added up to date conveniences and preserved original details such as the two-sided fireplace with beehive oven believed to be part of the original cabin.
The main floor of the residence has wide-plank wood floors, rustic rough-cut wood beams, exposed posts and 12 over 12 paned windows that stretch down from the ceiling almost to the floor. The open-plan space has a well-equipped galley-style kitchen and several physically comfortable-looking but decoratively uninspired sitting areas that present a visually confusing and psychically disharmonious hodge-podge of furniture "styles."
In addition to the historic main house the property includes, according to listing information, multiple pole barns, an indoor riding arena, a beautiful heated horse barn with tack rooms, two run in sheds with water, a two bedroom bunk house with kitchen and living room and a two story cement barn used as a wood working shop.
As far as Your Mama knows, in addition to her mansion in West Orange, NJ, Miz Goldberg continues to own a small house in Berkeley, CA she bought way back in 1985 for $335,000 as well as a 5 bedroom and 6 bathroom mansion she bought in 1993 for $2,547,525 in the same Pacific Palisades, CA neighborhood where other high-profile property owners include Hollywood heavyweight Steven Spielberg, mouthy comedian Bill Cosby, boxer Sugar Ray Leonard. She reportedly also owns real estate in upstate New York and in the Hamptons but we don't nuthin' about either of those alleged properties.
listing photos: Palmiter Realty Group
