SELLER: Josh Hartnett
LOCATION: St. Paul, Minnesota
PRICE: $2.395 million
SIZE: 5,056 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: The fine, hearty and winter-frozen folk at the Minneapolis Star were the first to reveal that heavy-browed and beau-hunky actor Josh Hartnett, currently starring in the gleefully macabre cable television series “Penny Dreadful,” hoisted his thoroughly renovated and restored Victorian mini-mansion in the affluent Lake of the Isles area of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the open market with an asking price of $2.395 million.
Incidentally enough, if of no import to the real estate matter at hand, Mister Hartnett graduated from the same Minneapolis public high school as the rebellious, music obsessed eldest of Your Mama’s b.f.f.s Chow-Lee and the Laundress’ three children attends, and property records confirm the 36-year-old actor purchased the historic property in September 2002 for $2.395 million, a familiar figure that suggests but does not in any way prove that Mister Hartnett overpaid in 2002 or that the Minneapolis real estate market has been grimly stagnant the last 12 or 14 years.
Whatever the case, the 11-room and three-plus story residence sits on a slight rise that provides the partially covered wraparound front porch an expansive, through-the-mature-trees vista of the currently snow-covered and probably frozen solid Lake of the Isles. Online marketing materials, which make no secret the property is owned by Mister Hartnett, show the house was originally built in 1887 and measures in at 5,056 square feet, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Fitted with scads of modern amenities and plenty of newfangled creature comforts, the 19th-century residence retains a slew of original (or at least era appropriate) architectural details that include carved wood doors and mantelpieces, inlaid wood floors and colorful stained glass windows.
Numerous and magnificently oversized windows in the elegantly proportioned formal living and dining rooms start just above the generous floor moldings and extend nearly to the ceilings. Both rooms have wood-burning fireplaces. At the rear of the residence, a sunny, just about all-white kitchen has marble countertops; grey-grouted, white subway tile backsplashes; high-quality, stainless steel appliances that include a center island cooktop; and a bevy of custom built-ins that include a china buffet, a window seat and a breakfast banquette set into a window-lined niche.
At least one of the second floor guest/family bedrooms has a television-surmounted fireplace with tile surround and carved wood mantelpiece, while the spacious master suite encompasses a private office/sitting room, a separate bedroom with bowed bay window, a well-equipped if ho-hum bathroom and direct access to a lake-view deck.
Up on the fully finished third floor, a flexi-use space is large enough to comfortably accommodate a pool table and a lounge area under a sharply angled ceiling, and down in the fully finished basement, there’s a secured and temperature controlled wine cellar next door to an unfortunately carpeted fitness room where one entirely mirrored wall makes it easy (and unavoidable) for Mister Hartnett and his workout buddies to ogle and criticize themselves while they torture their muscles into taut and bulging submission.
Our research indicates Mister Hartnett, who made a big Hollywood name for himself in the early 2000s in the big-budget war movies “Black Hawk Down” and “Pearl Harbor” and has since dated a cavalcade of models and actresses — Amanda Seyfried, Mischa Barton, Helena Christensen and Scarlett Johansson to name just four — also maintains a penthouse pad about half a dozen blocks north of the former site of the World Trade Center in New York City’s TriBeCa nabe that property records show was scooped up September 2004 for $2.4 million.
Listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty
