LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know we aren't the first property gossip to ride this particular bull at the celebrity real estate rodeo—that honor goes to a long-legged gal at Trulia—but we're giving a go around anyways...
Some of the many high profile people and celebrities who lost their proverbial shirts in the dirty terlit swirl that developed after the implosion of disgraced Wall Streeter Bernie Madoff's pernicious Ponzi scheme were long-married actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.
Obviously Your Mama ain't privy to the exact amount of dough lost by Mister Bacon and Miz Sedgwick but it was significant enough that she described the pocketbook punishment in 2009 to the people at People as "painful." Miz Sedgwick went on to point out that many "lost a lot more" and acknowledged that despite their losses she and Mister Bacon "have a lot of things to be grateful for." That there, children, is some capital C Celebrity Class for y'all. The lady showed her fans the respect of honesty about her situation and humbly recognized she remains one of the financially and professionally fortunate.
Anyhoo, whatever pecuniary pinch they may have felt due to Old Man Madoff's Machiavellian monetary maneuvers seems to have been rectified as evidenced, perhaps, by the $2,500,000 the East Coast-based couple coughed up in early December (2011) to acquire a very contemporary pied-a-terre in Los Angeles, CA. Certainly the Showbiz veterans have together and separately spent a great deal of time in Los Angeles but this is, as far as Your Mama knows, the first residence Miz Sedgwick and/or Mister Bacon have owned in Tinseltown.
Records we peeped reveal the property, which cleaves a steep hillside and offers a direct view across a wide canyon to the south slope of Mount Hollywood and the gorgeous Griffith Park Observatory, was sold by Lia Vollack, a hard-charging music/film industry executive who showed up in January (2012) at a very respectable number 51 on the Billboard Power 100. Miz Vollack purchased the property, as per Property Shark, in March 2007 for $2,450,000.
Not all online listings for the property indicate the square footage of the two-and-some story hill climber but the Los Angeles County Tax Man puts it at 2,760 square feet, a figure that may or may not be accurate. Trulia shows the house has 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms while listing information on Redfin states the updated, upgraded and fully re-worked residence was originally built in 1957 and contains a total of 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, a count we're pretty sure (but not certain) includes the lower level guest suite and separate flex-use space suitable for use as any number of things such as (but far from limited to) an office, gym, Zumba studio or model train making workshop.
A set of concrete steps climb from the street up the lushly landscaped hillside to the front door, an over-sized wood and glass thing that looks to Your Mama like it may have been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright or some such person. The airy, light-filled lower level through entry has some sort of tile underfoot we suspect is limestone or some other luscious material and not some plain old ceramic stuff. A floating, geometrically-minded switchback staircase dramatically constructed with a glass, wood and steel framework and what may or may not be terrazzo treads connects to the main living/entertaining spaces on the upper level.
The open plan space has an architecturally warm palette of wood and stone and includes a step down "formal" living area with chunky stacked stone fireplace, expensive looking hardwood floors—teak? mahogany? ipe?—the run perpendicular to the wood slats on the high pitched ceiling, and two walls of floor-to-ceiling wood-framed glass sliders that provide tree top, canyon and Griffith Park Observatory views.
For better or worse, a grid of pot lights stand in stead of a proper chandelier or pendant fixture in the terrazzo-floored "formal" dining area that's open to the well-equipped kitchen over a boxcar-sized center work island with breakfast bar. The adjoining family room/den has built-in bookcases along one entire wall and on another a row wood-framed sliders that lead to a terrace tucked into the hillside with built-in barbecue center behind which a cantilevered staircase winds up to a brilliant roof deck with panty-dropping view across the canyon to the Griffith Park Observatory.
The master bedroom itself, in which the previous owner quite curiously installed deep periwinkle wall-to-wall carpeting, isn't particularly large but does includes a variety of choice amenities such as a sky light or two, a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that slide open to a balance beam-slim balcony with canyon and Griffith Park Observatory views and, as per listing information, his and her closets and bathrooms.
A little known addendum to Your Mama's Big Book of Decorating Do's and Don'ts offers the children additional anecdotal guidance on the mercurial art of harmonious and stylish living. Suggestion 1 says, of course, "A well-stocked booze cabinet is a person's best defense against loneliness and isolation since even the least self-destructive hooch hound will drive ten or maybe even 12 miles out of his or her way for a few free drinks."
Suggestion 7 reads, "Everyone needs their own private Idaho to store their undergarments and outer fashions. If (and always when) space allows, cohabitating couples, those married before God and government and otherwise, ought not share closet space or dresser drawers." Your Mama—who is all but slovenly—and the Dr. Cooter—who is decidedly not—would surely be divorced by now iffin we had to share closets. But we digress.
Both the "formal" living and dining areas open through wide expanses of windows to the adult-oriented outdoor areas that include a small, free-form swimming pool, raised spa set into flagstone terracing and, at the front of the property, a lounging deck eclipsed by a dead-on view of—you got it—the Griffith Park Observatory.
Property records and other online databases show Miz Sedgwick and Mister Bacon also maintain a couple of homes on the east coast that include a roughly 40-acre rural spread in Sharon, CT it appears they scooped up in the late 1990s as well as a sprawling high-floor co-operative apartment in a particularly stunning Beaux Arts building built in 1906 and situated directly across the street from Central Park.
listing photos: The Agency via Trulia
