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From high-profile design commissions to exciting listings, there is always something new happening in the world of real estate. In this roundup, AD PRO has everything you need to know.
On the Market
Colin Jost lists West Village duplex
Now that he’s a family man, Saturday Night Live’s head writer is ditching his 1,400-square-foot West Village bachelor pad. Colin Jost has listed his Horatio Street garden duplex with Noble Black for $2.5 million, a significant bump from the $1.77 million he paid for it a decade ago.
Dating to 1929, the charming two-bedroom has a cottage-y vibe, with a wood-burning fireplace, French doors, and lots of exposed brick. Outside, a private courtyard patio can convert into an alfresco screening room with a pre-wired projector screen.
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The main floor houses a combined living-dining area and a narrow kitchen with canary-yellow cabinetry and a faience tile backsplash, as well as a guest suite with a claw-foot tub at the foot of the bed. Down a spiral staircase are the main bedroom and a second living room with direct access to the patio.
Jost and superstar wife Scarlett Johansson still have a half-dozen other homes between them, according to Dirt, including two places in the Hamptons and Johansson’s four-bedroom house in pastoral Snedens Landing, New York, where they got married in October 2020.
The real Elm Street house is available just in time for Halloween
1428 North Genesee Avenue might not ring any bells, but the three-bedroom Dutch Colonial is instantly recognizable to horror fans as the façade featured in Wes Craven’s 1984 masterpiece, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Located in Hollywood’s Spaulding Square neighborhood, the three-bedroom home is listed for $3.25 million with Heather T. Roy and Learka Bosnak of Douglas Elliman.
Lacking palm trees and other coastal clues, Spaulding Square has often been used as a shooting location to depict areas outside Southern California. Constructed in 1919, the Genesee Avenue home made the perfect stand-in for 1428 Elm Street in Nightmare’s fictional Springwood, Ohio. It was last purchased in 2013 for $2.1 million by Hustlers director Lorene Scafaria.
Although the home got a major renovation in the mid 2000s, the façade looks much like it did when Freddy Krueger came knocking. The bright red front door has been painted black, but the portico is still covered in those iconic green shingles. That’s where the similarities end, though. “Inside, it’s a beautiful traditional-style space with a modern twist,” Bosnak told the Los Angeles Times.
On the main level, walnut flooring weaves through oversized archways to a retro kitchen, grand main suite, and a terrace leading outside to the swimming pool and landscaped grounds. Across the property, a detached guest house has its own kitchen, designer bathroom, and pergola-topped patio.
Bosnak and Roy are leaning into the property’s spooky history: They’ll be giving out candy to trick-or-treaters, and bids on the house are due by midnight on Halloween.
The Western White House lists for $25 million
Live out your presidential fantasy in this 24-room neoclassical Georgian Colonial in Hillsborough, California. It’s nicknamed the “Western White House” for its striking similarity to the first family’s D.C. digs—from the portico’s majestic white columns to the rose garden and a library inspired by the Oval Office. The palatial 27,000-square-foot residence, about half an hour from the heart of San Francisco, sits on 2.9 acres and boasts 11 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, and four powder rooms, plus a wine cellar, gym, movie theater, and a statue-studded outdoor pool.
The mansion’s history is as fascinating as the property itself: Built in 1878 by cattle rancher and developer William Henry Howard, it was quickly bought by Charles Frederick Crocker, heir to the Central Pacific Railroad fortune. After Crocker’s death in 1897, his family sold the house, but not the land, to a local contractor who moved the entire house about half a mile away, where it stands today.
George Hearst, son of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, snatched up the property in 1930 and tapped architect Julia Morgan to give it a total overhaul. The first woman admitted to the esteemed Beaux Arts de Paris, Morgan previously designed the iconic Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
Providian Financial’s former CEO Shailesh Mehta purchased the house in 1997 for just over $6 million and has spent the last quarter century raising his family there. Beyond renovating the pool, updating the interior mechanics, and building two master suites at either end of the house, Mehta has left the property fairly intact. “The house was in beautiful shape,” he told Bloomberg. “There was no need to touch the structure. It was built in an era when houses were made to last.” With their kids now grown, though, Mehta and his wife decided it was time to downgrade to something more manageable.
Jennifer Gilson and Sophia Waldman of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty hold the $25 million listing.
Wallace Neff house listed in exclusive Trousdale Estates
A grand home designed by midcentury Hollywood architect Wallace Neff, who created houses for Cary Grant and Charlie Chaplin and pioneered Spanish colonial-revival influences in Southern California, is on the market for $23.9 million.
Located in Beverly Hills’s exclusive Trousdale Estates, the home has five en-suite bedrooms, including a main suite with a fireplace and French doors leading to a private backyard. Outside, lush trees and beautifully landscaped grounds frame covered loggias, a pool and grotto, and a built-in barbecue. Built in 1958, 419 Robert Lane is one of only 11 properties on the street.
It’s being sold by apparel-industry executive Frank Zarabi, who grew up in the house. Rochelle Maize of Nourmand and Associates has the listing.
Model Units
A high-in-the-sky apartment from an AD100 designer
Interior designer Kelly Behun has unveiled the model residence she designed in the Shop Architects-designed tower at 111 West 57th Street, the second tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere.
Priced at $19.5 million, the full-floor Tower Residence 34 offers nearly 4,500 square feet of living space, including three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. The apartment’s Great Room is a true focal point, according to sales director Amy Williamson, with custom furnishings, a sculptural dining banquette, and artwork selected by renowned curator Valérie Cueto.
Behun says her design was inspired by the residence’s stunning views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline. “You will see that there are echoes of the neighboring gilded roof in the living room’s custom chandelier, that the green silk velvet on the sofa harmonizes perfectly with the trees in the park, and the dusty lavenders and grays that evoke both the sky and skyline that this home feels so much a part of,” she said in a statement.
Prices at 111 West 57th Street range from $16 million to more than $66 million, with closings anticipated to commence later this year.
Milestones
Sales launch for the priciest pad in Brooklyn
Sales have launched at Olympia Dumbo, the tallest residential building in the waterfront Brooklyn neighborhood. Fortis Property Group is developing the 33-story tower, featuring sail-like architecture by Hill West and interiors from Workstead, with just 76 residences, ranging from one- to five-plus-bedroom apartments.
If the developers meet their premium, Olympia will also be Brooklyn’s most expensive property: The building’s total sellout is nearly $375 million, according to The Real Deal, averaging a hair under $5 million per apartment or $2,203 per square foot—the highest in the borough, according to real estate analysis firm Marketproof.
As for the building’s name, it’s a nod to Dumbo’s original name, when Comfort and Joshua Sands bought the land in 1787 as a summer getaway for New Yorkers.
Sales at Olympia Dumbo start at $1.75 million, and are being handled by Fredrik Eklund and John Gomes of the Eklund | Gomes Team of Douglas Elliman, the Novo Team of Douglas Elliman, and Karen Heyman of Sotheby’s International Realty.
Botániqo flowers in Ecuador
Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao is developing Botániqo, a nine-tower residential development in Quito, Ecuador’s vibrant Cumbayá neighborhood. As its name suggests, the 277-unit property will lean heavily into green design, with flora-filled terraces, rooftop gardens, and a living façade of native plants across the exterior of the towers.
A new public transport station will connect Cumbayá to downtown Quito and incorporate existing trees into the interior.
“I deeply believe that architecture must necessarily become a platform for each inhabitant to develop their own existence,” Bilbao said in a release. “In Botániqo, the human being is at the center of both the concept and the space itself.”
The development is a collaboration with Uribe Schwarzkopf, and it is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2024.
In the News
Manhattan luxury market registers highest week since 2013
For the third time this year, 50 contracts were signed at $4 million or above last week. The $483,647,999 volume is the highest weekly total of 2021, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly report, and the highest week ever since the week of December 16, 2013, when $576,185,000 was inked on deals. 16 properties went to contract at $10 million or above last week, the largest number since the week of March 11, 2013, when 19 contracts were signed.
That continues a trend cited in a separate report from Bespoke Real Estate, which found a 192% increase in year-over-year sales volume for homes in the $10 million-plus range in the third quarter of 2021.
The most expensive contract during the week of October 18 was a six-bedroom triplex penthouse at 443 Greenwich Street, listed for $49.5 million.
