LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,687,000
SIZE: 3,016 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As with yesterday's discussion, we have plugged-in real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak and the ever-so-powerfully well-informed Lucy Spillerguts to thank for today's discussion about dernier cri stand-up comedian and actor Aziz Ansari who has popped his real estate cherry with the $2,687,000 off-market acquisition of a Asian-inspired contemporary post-and-beam confection custom built in the late 1960s by an associate of the venerable Buff and Hensman firm in L.A.'s celeb-filled Los Feliz area.*
Mister Ansari, thirty years old and Indian by ethnicity but a born and raised native of South Carolina, is probably best known to the television-watching world for his role as the over-confident underachiever Tom Haverford on the the sitcom Parks and Recreation. The suit-favoring food aficionado has also popped up in a number of movies (I Love You Man, Get Him to the Greek, 30 Minutes or Less) and a handful of boob-toob programs (Reno 911, Scrubs). He still works the stand-up tour circuit and his latest (and third) comedy special, Buried Alive, was released last week on Netflix. We've seen it. We laughed. We loved it. Anyways...
Listing details that the ever-resourceful Yolanda dug up on the interenets and kindly forwarded to Your Mama indicates the painstakingly angular two-story house, which has a not-so-vague and certainly on-purpose resemblance to a bird in flight, has four bedrooms and three bathrooms in 3,016 square feet of mid-century modern-era interior space that's all but pickled in architectural amber with many if not most details and fixtures solidly intact.
A circular drive passes under a decoratively screened porte-cochere that does double-duty as the residence's two-car carport. Locked gates on either side of the carport open to high-walled courtyards, one lushly planted with a raised lounging deck and the other a perfect dog run with a wee patch of tree-shaded and sun-dappled grass.
The essentially symmetrical layout of the main floor revolves around a center hall foyer with (yummy) charcoal-colored terrazzo floors and an open-tread floating staircase that's sure to baffle boozy-eyed users. Under a deep exterior overhang a thrillingly tall wall of windows fills the room with ambient natural light.
A cook-friendly center island kitchen, on axis directly behind the foyer, still has the original oil-rubbed walnut cabinetry but has been lightly (and sensibly) upgraded with engineered stone counter tops and high-grade, up-to-date appliances. The kitchen is flanked on one side by a roomy parquet-floored living/dining room anchored by a huge fireplace and a wall of built-in bookshelves topped by triangular clerestory windows and on the other by a slightly smaller but also parquet-floor den/study/dining/family room. Both spaces have voluminous, steep-pitched vaulted ceilings and connect through wall-wide banks of sliding glass doors to the outdoor entertaining areas that run along the back of the house.
As best as Your Mama can tell all three of the guest/family bedrooms are located on the second floor along with a lone hall bathroom and an airy master bedroom defined by a high-pitched vaulted ceiling and an solid wall of glass that opens to a private deck with panoramic views over Hollywood and Los Angeles. The attached master bathroom appears to be an extraordinarily well-maintained vintage affair but is—at least for Your Mama, anyways—entirely too earth tonal in its palette. The children will note a chocolate brown wall-mounted telephone next to the crapper. Once upon a time, a wall-mounted phone next to the toilet was a convenient, hotel-style extravagance but nowadays, thanks to mobile phones, is charmingly obsolete.
Both the living room and the den/study/family room open through wide glass sliders to entertainment terraces tucked under deep and soaring eaves. Off the living room there's an outdoor living room/lounge and off the den there's a dining area with built-in barbecue. A deck extends the outdoor living areas out beyond the eaves and around a swimming pool and separate, circular spa. A short but wide row of hedges preserves privacy from the street and houses below but still allows for sweeping city and sky views.
*Iffin we're being honest—and we always are—we'd confess that we really don't know if this is the first house Mister Ansari has ever purchased. Alls we really know, butter beans, is that this is the first house this property gossip knows Mister Ansari to have bought. Okay? Okay.
listing photos: Hollywood Hills Homes
