Just 24 hours after it popped up for sale, the asking price for the long-time Los Angeles home of late actress Markie Post was chopped by half a million bucks, from $6.75 million to $6.275 million. Post passed last August, at 70, after a nearly four-year battle with cancer.
Best known to TV audiences of a certain age for her roles on the 1980s sitcom “Night Court” and the 1990s sitcom “Hearts Afire,” and to movie goers as Cameron Diaz’s character’s mother in the 1998 comedy blockbuster “There’s Something About Mary,” Post got her start in showbiz working behind the scenes on game shows such as “Split Second” and “Double Dare” before she popped up on camera as a card dealer on “Card Sharks.”
Post and her veteran sitcom TV writer/producer husband Michael A. Ross — his credits include “Rules of Engagement,” “Hot in Cleveland” and “Santa Clarita Diet” — purchased the prominent half-acre corner property in the affluent, celeb-favored Toluca Lake community in 1991 for just over a million dollars.
Designed by architect Kevin A. Clark, whose inspiration for the house came from a trip to Louisiana, according to promo materials, and completed in 1992, the genteel Southern Colonial home is all but invisible behind a towering hedge amid grassy gardens, brick patios, mature foliage and, in the front yard, opposite deep, rocking-chair-worthy porches that span the full width of the front of house on both levels, a 200-year-old stone pine.
With 12-foot ceilings, polished European white-oak floorboards with walnut inlay, and detailed dentil moldings, the nearly 7,400-square-foot spread marries time-tested traditional architecture — formal living and dining rooms flank the center hall entry; the den is wrapped in knotty pine paneling — with a more easy-going and modern open floor plan in the casual, family-oriented spaces, which include a spacious cook’s kitchen that flows into an informal dining area. Once a rare feature in L.A., but an increasingly popular one nowadays, the house has a finished basement that contains a workout room, a bonus room and a laundry room that can also be accessed from the three-car garage.
There are a total of four bedrooms and four bathrooms, plus a powder room. Each of the three guest bedrooms — one on the main floor and two more upstairs — has a walk-in closet, while the sprawling homeowner’s suite includes a sitting area with fireplace, one of four in the home, along with a walk-in closet and a large bath.
At the back of the house, an inviting veranda outside the kitchen overlooks a broad, boxwood-lined lawn ringed by shade-making Chinese elm, magnolia and eucalyptus trees. Off to one side, a slatted pergola shades a brick-paved dining terrace alongside an outdoor fireplace and a teardrop-shaped spa that spills over into the pool.
The listing is being handled by Eric Lieberman and Justine Lieberman of Compass.
