LOCATION: Minneapolis, MN
PRICE: $1,695,000
SIZE: (approx.) 9,500 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Mary Tyler Moore passed this week at age 80 and, as we first heard from our boozy, pop-culture maven best mate Fiona Trambeau, the Minneapolis residence featured in the opening credits of the beloved entertainment industry veteran’s unquestionably revolutionary 1970s sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” is currently for sale at $1.695 million. The turreted Queen Anne Victorian mansion, built in 1900 on a prominent corner parcel of just over one-third of an acre in the well-to-do Kenwood neighborhood between Cedar Lake and the Lake of the Isles, has actually been for sale for coming up on five years at steadily declining prices that started at $2.895 million. Unfortunately for the current owners, a couple of successful executives in the financial services sector, they’re facing a gut-wrenching, million-plus dollar loss on the property they purchased in the summer of 2007 for $2.8 million.
Moore’s “Mary Tyler Moore Show” character, relentlessly perky and over-eager neophyte news producer Mary Richards, lived in a lofty bi-level studio apartment tucked up into the soaring attic space of a large house converted to apartments. The apartment had a voluminous wood-beamed ceiling, wall-to-wall shag carpeting, and a soaring Palladian window that opened to a small balcony. However, the actual structure that “housed” Mary Richard’s fictional bachelorette pad is nowadays a four-story single-family mansion of about 9,500-square-feet with a total of 7 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms. Current listing details for the internationally famous residence shows extensively renovated interior spaces mix and matches original architectural details with modern-day features and creature comforts. In addition to an enclosed wrap-around front porch, a foyer with stunning carved wood staircase and ample formal living and dining rooms — both with fireplaces, there’s also a music room and an up-to-date kitchen that opens to a family room with fireplace. A massive finished basement contains a confusing warren of rooms that includes a party-sized dry sauna and laundry room and the fully finished attic space holds a den with fireplace, kitchenette, several bedrooms and bathrooms, and a couple of decks with leafy views into the surrounding treetops.
In real life, Moore, who won seven Emmys, three Golden Globes and received an Oscar nomination in 1981 for “Ordinary People,” and her long-time physician husband, Dr. Robert Levine, lived in a stately mansion on two adjacent parcels of nearly 6.5 acres in ultra-rich Greenwich, CT, that property records indicate was acquired in two separate but contiguous 2006 transactions that totaled $10.25 million.
Listing photos: Berg Larsen Group / Coldwell Banker Burnet
Floor plan for Mary Richard’s Apartment: via Hooked on Houses
