LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $12,495,000
SIZE: 6,350 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in early April (2013), six or seven months after it appeared in the increasingly celebrified pages of Architectural Digest, Your Mama passed along a bit of juicy real estate scuttlebutt we'd heard about how world-famous fashion and celebrity photographer Steven Meisel planned to list his sleek and sexy abode set on a high ridge between the fashionable Bird Streets above the Sunset Strip and the ever-trendy and spendy Trousdale Estates 'hood in Beverly Hills (CA) with an asking price of around $15,000,000.
It wasn't until late May that the property gossip gals at The Wall Street Journal reported the 1963 George MacLean-designed, Marmol + Radziner re-worked, and Brad Dunning-decorated domicile was to be listed for $13 million. Finally, in mid-June, Mister Meisel's single-story sprawler did indeed pop up on the open market with an official asking price of $13 million. We're quite certain every mid-century modern aficionado looking at or actually shopping for a contemporary or, at least, modern-minded home in the $10-15 million price range trekked through the house. Alas, Mister Meisel mini-compound remained un-sold and in mid-September it was removed from the market.
Whilst we whittled away a few days on the sugary sands of the Yucatán last week Mister Meisel's ridge top hideaway magically reappeared with a new, high-profile real estate agent, a slightly reduced asking price of $12,495,000, and a (partially) new crop of well-framed and mostly twilight-timey listing photographs.
Property records indicate Mister Meisel acquired the 1.550 acre property and its zig-zagging mid-century ranch house back in October 2001 for $2,750,000. Current digital marketing materials show the 6,350 square foot house and guest house have a total of three bedrooms and six bathrooms, including that over-sized and now-famous master bathroom that incorporates not only onyx-lined bathing facilities but also clearly defined sitting and office areas for early-morning and late-night multi-tasking.
Lacquered Chinese red double doors make an elegant and glamorously international portal to a discreet-seeming buy high-octane city-view residence did up and done over in a fashion that may not be to every body's personal decorative and/or architectural tastes but is none-the-less an excellent example of an exceptionally sophisticated space for high-style living. Notice, children, the high-gloss marble floors, a period-appropriate mica wall in the dining room, the hand-crafted teak and walnut cabinetry throughout, and the many wide stretches of floor-to-ceiling glass walls and windows that peer into verdant courtyards and out over a fantastical and glimmering swathe of Los Angeles from downtown to—on a clear day, anyways—the the shimmering Pacific.
We're not sure what Mister Meisel's future west coast real estate plans may be but we do know he'll hardly be homeless when his Bev Hills house finds a willing and suitable buyer; Property records show the globally in-demand image maker continues to own at least three adjacent (and probably combined) apartments that total about 4,000 square feet on a higher floor of a fine, full-service pre-war condominium building on lower Park Avenue.
listing photos: The Agency
