Veteran stage and screen actor Victor Garber, currently starring opposite Bernadette Peters in the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” listed his multi-residence compound in the unsung Town of Woodbury hamlet of Highland Park, N.Y., about an hour and a half drive north of Midtown Manhattan, with an asking price of $1.649 million. The four-time Tony nominated Canadian thespian, also a six-time Emmy nominee — three for his early Aughts role on “Alias,” purchased the sylvan spread in 2009 for $1.3 million. All together the three parcels that comprise the bucolic compound come to 8.1 acres with a total of nine bedrooms and five full and three half bathrooms divided between a showbiz pedigreed main residence that dates to the turn of the 20th-century, a separate barn-style guest cottage/art studio and a rather quotidian 1970s ranch house.
Completely hidden from the road and approached by a long, tree-lined drive that lends the property a sense of serenity and seclusion, the three-story Colonial Revival-style main residence, once home to burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee and filled with moody, sensitive portraits painted by Garber’s ruggedly handsome and also Canadian husband, artist and model Ranier Andreesen, sits prominently at the head of a circular drive on an elevated, grassy knoll with five bedrooms and three full and two half bathrooms. A top-to-bottom renovation and restoration in 2011 saw the replacement of the kitchen and bathrooms while retaining the house’s rambling layout, vintage character and original architectural detailing.
Flooded with light from 12-over-12 pane sash windows under a cathedral ceiling, the living room is anchored by an imposing stone fireplace; the dining room, painted blood-red, has a cozy, inglenook-style fireplace set into a shallow arch; large enough to accommodate a baby grand piano and wrapped in waist-high bead board wainscoting, a library/den has a fireplace between custom-lit built-in bookshelves; and the kitchen, arranged around a center island and fully updated with solid surface countertops and high-quality appliances, includes a casual dining space with cushioned built-in banquette and efficient access to a stone-paved terrace for barbecuing and al fresco dining.
Some of the house’s more unexpected features include a spacious third floor landing with a giant oculus window and a decadently finished basement with exposed brick walls, a wet bar and a theater outfitted with a projection screen set into a slender proscenium stage trimmed in gold with crimson velvet curtains. A screened porch outside the kitchen is the perfect, bug-free spot from which to take in the vast lawn that rolls gently down from the back of the house to the wood’s dense edge. To one side of the house is a small, fenced kitchen garden and to the other a swimming pool.
A separate one-bedroom and one-bathroom barn-style guesthouse includes an airy art studio for Andreesen, whose painting have ended up in the collections of entertainment industry luminaries like Clive Davis, Nathan Lane, Alan Alda, Laura Linney and Whoopi Goldberg, and a renovated if otherwise unremarkable ranch-style residence with three bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms sits near the road on a separate 1.3 acre parcel with a finished basement, a two-car garage and grassy front and backyards.
According to listing agent Hamid Moghadam at Ellis Sotheby’s International Realty, the former “Legends of Tomorrow” star, who recent years has also appeared on “The Flash” and “Power” TV series, would like to sell his upstate getaway because he and Andreesen nowadays spend more time in Los Angeles and New York City where property records indicate Garber has long owned a terraced two-unit combination penthouse atop a handsomely unassuming full-service 1960s red brick apartment house on the chic border between the West Village and the Meatpacking District.
