She spent several months during the COVID-19 lockdowns last year holed up with her husband and young child in a small one-bedroom apartment above a grocery store in Brooklyn but Tony-winning Broadway star Annaleigh Ashford, most known to TV watchers for her role on “Masters of Sex,” and her actor husband Joe Tapper have since relocated to the West Coast where she’s busy working with Thomas Middleditch on the sitcom “B Positive,” and tax records show they now have a bit more room to spread out with the slightly more than $1.8 million purchase of a charming home in the foothills above Hollywood.
Built in 1922 on an unconventional triangular-shaped parcel of almost one-fifth of an acre, the white-stucco and red tile-roofed Spanish bungalow serves up a healthy dose of vintage character. The living room features unusual but fetching tapered wood beams across the flat ceiling along with dark-stained wood floors, a simple stucco fireplace and glass sliders that open the room to a courtyard patio around which the house wraps itself.
The dining room has French doors that open to a sunny patio that overlooks the hedge-privatized front yard, while the unexpectedly roomy kitchen sports updated terrazzo flooring, quartz countertops and up-to-date if only just average-quality stainless-steel appliances. A trio of guest bedrooms share a basic bathroom, and the en-suite main bedroom, which includes a small bath with lilac and black vintage tile work, is flooded with natural light thanks to paned casement windows on three sides.
Swagged fabric panels create dappled shade over the tile-paved central courtyard patio that steps down to a capsule-shaped swimming pool. Grassy gardens surround the house and a detached garage alongside the pool is converted to flexible living space with grey-toned wood flooring and a vaulted and whitewashed exposed beam ceiling.
The property was listed with John Podhor and Katie Crain at Compass, while Ashford and Tapper were repped by Richard Wilkenson, also at Compass.
Tax records indicate that despite living in a small apartment over a grocery store last year, Ashford has owned a two-bedroom condo in an upscale building in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood that was acquired in 2018 for a bit more than $1.8 million and almost immediately set out as a rental at $6,500 per month. She previously owned a townhouse in Hollywood’s Cahuenga Pass that was purchased in late 2016 for $1.125 million and sold over the summer of 2019 for $1.03 million.
The triple-threat Broadway veteran, whose stage credits include roles in the smash hits “Kinky Boots,” “Wicked,” “Hair” and “Legally Blonde the Musical,” earned both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award in 2015 for her featured role in the play “You Can’t Take It With You.” In addition to a multi-season run on “Masters of Sex,” Ashford’s film and television credits include “American Crime Story,” “Frozen” and the lead role in the upcoming biopic “Smart Blonde,” about Oscar and Tony winning actress Judy Holliday, one of the many actors, writers and musicians investigated in the 1950s by Senator Pat McCarran’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee for alleged association with Communism.