Whoopi Goldberg lists longtime Los Angeles estate
Whoopi Goldberg is cutting her West Coast real estate ties, listing her longtime residence in the posh, sea breeze licked Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles with an asking price of $8.795 million. The acclaimed actress, comedian, children’s book author and morning chat show host, a rare winner of an Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy and Golden Globe who for the last ten years has held down a seat as an outspoken and occasionally controversial co-host on “The View,” purchased the historic, Hollywood-pedigreed spread in 1993 for $2.547 million.
Built along the prestigious Amalfi Rim in the demurely ritzy Riviera neighborhood for Austrian writer Vicki Baum — her novel “Menschen im Hotel” was made into the 1932 Oscar winning film “Grand Hotel” — and later inhabited by acclaimed silver screen icon David Niven, the two-story 1930s, Art Moderne main residence measures in at 7,039 square feet with five en suite bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. A separate apartment for guests or staff atop a detached three-car garage includes a fireplace, full kitchen and bathroom.
All but invisible behind a visually impenetrable line of towering privet hedges and secured gates, the residence retains important and distinctive original architectural features such as the streamlined curvilinear façade, elegant black and white marble checkerboard flooring in the amply proportioned foyer, intricately detailed ceiling moldings and stone faced fireplaces in the commodious step-down formal living room and in the bookshelf lined den/library. The residence also offers a formal dining room, a family room and a remodeled eat-in kitchen that adheres to the home’s 1930s roots with black and white marble checkerboard floor tiles, slab marble countertops on simple, utilitarian white cabinetry and an up-to-date collection of high-end, commercial-style stainless steel appliances.
Check out the estate in the slideshow below:
The .64-acre grounds incorporate a spacious gated motor court, terraced and grassy gardens shaded by mature specimen trees and bordered by lush tropical foliage as well as a variety of stone-paved terraces and balconies, some of which benefit from over-the-treetops cross-canyon vistas, and a flagstone terrace surrounded swimming pool in the shape of a plastic bottle of soda or, alternately, a buxomly curvaceous woman.
With its curving, tree-lined streets, large lots and carefully maintained residences that represent a broad spectrum of architectural vernaculars, the Riviera neighborhood has always been attractive to, not to mention only affordable to, wealthy and high profile residents. The longtime Los Angeles residence of disgraced comedian Bill Cosby, a faux-timbered 1930s Tudor number, sits catty-corner to Goldberg’s estate and Steven Spielberg’s almost 5.25-acre, multi-structure canyon-side compound is a but short stroll around the corner. Other famous folk who own homes in the hoity-toity ‘hood include soap story veteran star Eric Braeden, “The Simpsons’” Dan Castellaneta, Adam Sandler, Sugar Ray Leonard and progressive house DJ Ryan “Kaskade” Raddon.
Over the last handful of years Goldberg has substantially thinned her once sprawling property portfolio. A scenically situated 745-acre farm in rural Brattleboro, Vt., was sold a handful of years ago for about $2 million; a classic loft apartment in lower Manhattan’s SoHo ‘hood went in 2010 for $3.074 million; and a small compound with a restored, late 19th century Victorian on the edge of downtown Berkeley, Calif., that she picked up in the mid-1980s for $335,000 was of-loaded in 2015 for $2.05 million. The showbiz dynamo now resides primarily in West, Orange, N.J., about 20 miles due west of Midtown Manhattan, where in 2009 she shelled out $2.8 million for a stately, 1927 Georgian Colonial Revival mansion of nearly 9,500-square-feet on almost 2.5 landscaped acres in the guard gated, picturesquely leafy and exceedingly affluent West Orange enclave of Llewellyn Park.
listing photos: Douglas Elliman Real Estate
Launch Gallery: Whoopi Goldberg List Longtime Estate in Pacific Palisades
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