SELLER: Taraji P. Henson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,995,000
SIZE: 4,202 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: After two months on the open market, 2016 Golden Globe winner Taraji P. Henson has chopped the price on her three-story residence in the Beachwood Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills from $3.25 million to $2.995 million. Property records indicate the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actress, who murders her current gig as the fearless and outrageous Cookie Lyon on the television melodrama “Empire,” acquired the vertically oriented, city-view dwelling in March 2010 for $1.695 million and current listing details reveal the 4,202-square-foot residence, described as “Moorish accented” with a castle-like crenelated cornice and a dozen keyhole arches symmetrically arranged across the upper levels of front façade, has four bedrooms and five bathrooms.
Antique, carved wood doors are set into a pointed arch between two garage bays that combined accommodate up to three cars. A street-level foyer provides direct access to both garages as well as a pint-sized, five-seat home theater with projection screen and in-wall surround sound speaker system. (Somewhere within the house there’s a gym, which may or may not be located in one of the garage bays.) A carved wood staircase curves before it straightens out and ascends to the second floor where it arrives rather unconventionally and less than ideally in the middle of a multi-purpose area that does busy triple duty as the kitchen, a not particularly “formal” dining room, and an over-sized stair landing between the second and third floors. The partially double-height dining area/stair landing has a toe curling city view through an immense picture window and the kitchen is equipped with center island, liberally embellished carved wood cabinetry, and commercial-style stainless steel appliances. An atrium window over the sink holds a giant sitting Buddha statue that listing details suggest “creates Serenity.” The adjacent living room with chunky carved stone fireplace and three-stool wet bar, opens through glass doors to one of the four keyhole arch balconies that front the residence. Each of the balconies is smartly hung with opaque, full-height curtains that not only block sun glare but provide an abundance of in-house privacy from the street and neighboring properties. A slender space that adjoins the living room, in to which Miz Henson opted to squeeze a pool table, has a row of keyhole arch display niches along the back wall and a glass-doored 600+ bottle wine closet. The eagle-eyed will have already noted the door to the wine closet doesn’t go all the way to the floor so what booze is not accessible by a simple lean in would seem to require an inelegant clamber to get at.
The carved wood staircase continues up to an unusually and unexpectedly generous landing that accommodates a sitting area and includes a second, opulently carved fireplace. There’s a third fireplace with another fancifully carved mantelpiece in the master bedroom while the generically luxurious master bathroom is slathered in decoratively prosaic but presumably high quality beige stone tile and is stocked with twin sinks, a garden tub, and separate glass-fronted shower. One of the three guest bedrooms — all with walk-in closet and en suite facility —has been custom converted for the celebrity lady of the house to a dressing room with built-in make-up vanity and a professional shampoo basin installed in the attached bathroom. A slender, hedge-backed strip of lawn at the rear of the residence steps up to a second flat and grassy pad defined by a curved and vine encrusted retaining wall with a row or arched niches hung with Moroccan lanterns. Both the molded fiberglass hot tub sunk partway into the lawn and a circular fire pit mostly ringed by a cushioned built-in banquette have long views past the house and, on a clear day, beyond the downtown skyline.
Last summer Miz Henson put a residence she owns in nearby Glendale up for lease at $3,400 per month — she paid $431,000 for the two-bedroom pad in late 2002 — but we confess we don’t have a clue about her future property plans. None the less, iffin we were the wagering type — and we’re not — we’d bet the proverbial farm she’s set her real estate sights on someplace larger, behind gates, and more representational of a women of her increasingly vaunted professional position.
Listing photos: John Aaroe Group
