Enduring disco icon Gloria Gaynor has her longtime home in Green Brook Township, N.J., on the leafy suburban outskirts of Newark, about an hour’s drive southwest out of Midtown Manhattan, on the market at a pinch under $1.25 million.
Globally renown for her 1970s anthemic booty shakers “I Will Survive” (1978) and “Never Can Say Goodbye” (1974), the now 70-something singer purchased the property in 1999 for $888,000, while married to her now former husband Linwood Simon, from prolific local architect Jeffrey Beer, who designed the home.
Gaynor has surfed the success of her Grammy-winning hit “I Will Survive” for four decades, and the song continues to resonate (and get added to Spotify playlists) among people off all ages and stripes. Indeed, the song has proved inspirational enough that you can’t swing a cat without running into a cover of the legendary song: Diana Ross Diana Rossed it, alt-rockers Cake gave it a quirky backbeat and Swedish dream pop vocal stylist Lykke Li released her own voluptuous and languidly forlorn version last year. Still, Gaynor has not just rested on her well-deserved 1970s laurels; Last year she took home her second Grammy, this time in the Best Roots Gospel Album category, for her 20th studio album, “Testimony.”
As it turns out, Gaynor has had the custom-built late-1980s contemporary mansion on and off the market for just over two years as a variety of prices as high as $1.495 million and as low as $1.175 million. The property is available through Lisa Poggi at Douglas Elliman.
Set on nearly an acre of park-like grounds along a leafy cul-de-sac where it’s tucked amid mature trees and sculpted plantings, the asymmetrically designed pale gray residence contains five bedrooms and four full and two half bathrooms in about 8,000 square feet spread over three floors.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman The front of the house showcases by a squiggly, quintessentially 1980s glass block wall as well as an octagonal double-height foyer finished with lustrous spider-veined black marble floor tiles inset with a narrow strip of white marble.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman Floor-to-ceiling windows frame lush views in the immaculately maintained and preserved-in-1980s-and-’90s-amber interior spaces that include a 31-foot-long step-down formal living room with marble-tiled fireplace and a formal dining space jazzed up with a glitzy jewel-shaped chandelier.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman The kitchen is open over a six-sided granite-topped island snack bar to a cozily proportioned family room dominated by a huge fireplace. The nearby breakfast area is set into a bay lined with full-height French doors, while the curved glass block wall in the den/home office is dizzyingly reflected in a wall sheathed in mirrored panels.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman Each of four guest bedrooms includes ample closet space, per marketing materials, while the main-floor principal suite comprises a private lounge with fireplace and a roomy walk-in closet. French doors in the bedroom open to skylight topped sunroom, and the bathroom is outfitted with a two sinks, a jetted tub surrounded in inky-black polished marble and a shower formed by a curved wall of glass blocks.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman The house’s lower level is a vast (if somewhat charmless) indoor entertainment mecca complete with wet bar, pool table, gym, juke box and home theater with a dozen puffy black leather theater recliners. French door connect the sprawling space to a spacious covered patio.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman An elevated terrace outside the kitchen overlooks the grassy backyard as well as what might be the home’s most unusual feature, an arched glass greenhouse structure that houses a heated swimming pool.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman -
Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman A slim stone path passes beneath towering specimen trees as it cuts across a swath of uniformly green rolling lawn on its way to a gazebo that’s picturesquely placed alongside a waterfall that spills into a stone-lined pond.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman Ms. Gaynor told The New York Times, the first to report on the listing, that she has hosted many “dinner parties and backyard gatherings” over the years, at one point building a stage next to the pool and occasionally whipping up one of her culinary specialties such oxtail strudel in puff pastry.
Still hard at work — the showbiz legend is putting together another gospel album and working on a documentary about her life, Gaynor says she’s building another home closer to Manhattan, in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., where she’s re-creating all the bits and bobs she likes in her Green Brook home.
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Image Credit: courtesy Douglas Elliman