It was only a hot minute after we heard Louis Tomlinson had plopped down $10 million on a remote compound in the mountains between Calabasas and Malibu that we stumbled across an eye-catchingly bizarre residence in a famously celebrity-packed pocket of the Ho-wood Hills. The property displayed all the hallmarks of being purchased by a celeb, so as always Yolanda set out to crack the case.
The house in question, bluntly and punnily described by Curbed last year as a “Frankenstein Cape Cod” was originally built in 1940 but was heavily remodeled in the 1980s by superstar (but not a “starchitect”) architect Frank Gehry. Frankly, Frank, you may be a deserved icon in the world of architecture but it’s Yolanda’s humble opinion that this is not one of your best works. Or even one of your passable works. We don’t know how much of this hot mess is actually your doing but that thing above is just totally not okay. Poor creature. Yolanda would normally include a house this sad in her prayers, in hopes there might be a future resurrection at the hands of an owner with money to burn and an eye for good design. But in this case we feel there’s no saving the old girl. End her misery. Burn this bitch to the ground.
Sorry, y’all. We’ve been hitting the bottle a bit earlier than normal today. Anywho, this was the longtime residence of Oscar-nominated actress Sally Kellerman (M*A*S*H) and her husband, producer Jonathan Krane. Property records show the couple picked up the pad in 1995 for an unknown amount of dough. Unfortunately for them, the property seems to have fallen into the unforgiving maw of foreclosure and in May 2014 the lender sold the property at auction. That same June it was acquired by a couple of non-celeb gents for $1.9 million. Interestingly enough, a little pokin’ around property records reveals that these two happen to be the very same fellas who recently sold a house in the “Bird Streets” to young writer/director Adam Pritzker for a whopping $7,000,000. But we digress…
The two dudes gave the then-remarkably ugly property a complete renovation. Y’all feel free to debate amongst yourselves at the outcome. You know how Yolanda feels about the exterior, but we think the interior remodel looks very nice (albeit perhaps a tetch too whitewashed), with clean lines, spacious rooms, and an eye-pleasing color palette. What a pity it’s hidden inside such a hot mess of an exterior.
The two house-flipping fellas put the property on the market in May 2015 with an asking price of $4,995,000, but it wasn’t until late December that the property finally sold for an even-steven $4 million. Property records shield the identity of the buyer behind a mysteriously-named LLC but a few minutes of sleuthing reveal the entity is directly connected to a man best-known for managing the finances of everyone’s favorite boyband. From there the nosy Yolanda set about slapping a few local beotches, demanding they tell us which 1D crooner had just acquired a new Gehry house. We finally got our gurl Henrietta to cluck out that it was Niall Horan, the only member of the group not from the U.K. (he hails from Ireland) who scooped up the cacophonous crib.
Like most homes in the Hollywood Hills, the house sits fairly hard up on the street but it still manages some privacy thanks to its big white wall and leafy trees. The property sports a detached two-car garage, and at right there’s also a courtyard kitted out with (mostly) drought-tolerant landscaping.
The front door opens into an unexpectedly commodious living room with fireplace and French doors leading out into the backyard.
Library/sitting room on the left and lounge on the right. Beam us up, Scotty!
The combined kitchen/dining area is exceptionally spacious and airy with top-grade stainless Viking appliances. The room sports several more sets of French doors that open directly to the back patio and pool to create the pleasing indoor/outdoor lifestyle California is so famous for.
The “white walls and blonde hardwood floors” theme continues upstairs and into the master bedroom. The master bath is wonderfully commodious and mostly slathered in a bluish hue of either marble or stone. There’s also a huge walk-in closet somewhere nearby, and the whole house manages to squeeze in 5 beds and 5.5 baths into 4,412 square feet of living space.
At left, the big ol’ white asymmetrical terrace off the master bedroom with views of the surrounding treetops and a bit of Laurel Canyon. There’s also an office overlooking the home’s backyard.
The backyard is petite but contains a pleasingly-simple rectangular pool surrounded by tall hedges for maximum privacy. There’s also a patch of big enough grass for a nice dog run and a tiny spa – at least we think that’s what it is – confoundingly tucked into a corner of the yard opposite the pool.
The listing says the home is located on “Celebrity Row”, and indeed this particular street, which snakes several twisty and sometimes shockingly narrow miles through the Hollywood Hills, has long been a celebrity magnet. Some of the other famous people who currently call this road home are Jack Nicholson, Robert Pattinson, Rebel Wilson, Quentin Tarantino, and many, many more.
We don’t think our Mr. Horan has had the opportunity to move into his new home yet – he’s reportedly been on a spiritual quest or some such silliness in Asia for the past month or so – but once we does we hope he’ll have the good sense to have some of those exterior architectural lumps and bumps shaved off. Maybe there’s still hope for this crib yet? We know about the colloquial “Warts and all…” but it really doesn’t have to be taken so literally, you know? Just kidding. We’re sure Mr. Horan actually likes the unconventional architecture – he did pay millions for it, after all.
