Have a nomination for a jaw-dropping listing that would make a mighty fine House of the Day? Get thee to the tipline and send us your suggestions. We’d love to see what you’ve got. Click here to view the full photogallery. Location: York, Maine Price: $1,490,000 The Skinny: Nestled on a patch of grass just steps from the rocky shore, this is a Maine cottage in its highest expression. From the location, to the shingle-style design, to the stone fireplaces, even to a lack of bathrooms—just two for six bedrooms—this coastal cottage was built for another era but would suit the casual summer home enthusiast as well. Nothing here is too precious, but it all has a fitting patina. The kitchen, while small, has wooden countertops and original built-ins, while the entertaining spaces have a similarly historic feel, but an overly gloomy color scheme. The saving grace is the waterfront porch, stretching across the home’s oceanfront, with stone columns and choice views. The 3,400-square-foot house is currently listed for $1.49M. · York, Maine [Tate & Foss]
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House of the Day: Panoramic Views from Just Above Maine’s Rocky Coastline
In honor of the company’s 30th anniversary, chefs at Irvine, Calif.-based Qzina Specialty Foods built a six-foot-tell replica of the Yucatán Temple of Kukulkan, one of the world’s foremost examples of Mayan architecture, out of chocolate. The finished product weighs 18,239 pounds, earning it a Guinness World Record. [Architizer]
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For the full home-staging infographic, head to MyMove. THE INTERNET —The guys over at MyMove turned some stats about home staging into an infographic. One study looked at 410 listed homes that were staged before hitting the market—on average, they sold in 42 days. [MyMove] THE INTERNET —On sale right now on Gilt Home: props from Revenge as well as Revenge -inspired furnishings. Head over to buy a glass table lamp from the poolhouse of Grayson Manor, the porch swing from Emily Thorne’s beach house, and tufted furnishings befitting of any Hamptons reigning Queen Bee. [Gilt Home] EVERYWHERE —Lego adds another to its Architecture series: the Gate of Exalted Ceremonies, better known as Sungnyemun, the famed pagoda-style gateway in Seoul, South Korea. It’s the first Asian landmark to be immortalized by the toy blocks. [CurbedWire Inbox] EVERYWHERE —Adding to its Internet and mobile presence, Realtor.com, in collaboration with RealBizMedia, will launch a TV channel later this year. According to a rep, the new channel won’t have original programming just yet, but it will offer location-based property listings that “will be displayed by price range delivered by the Home Tour Network and include high quality photo-based videos and descriptions provided by agents.” [CurbedWire Inbox]
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CurbedWire: Revenge For Sale on Gilt Home; Realtor.com Does TV
Eight years and like a million delays later, Rem Koolhaas’ biggest project to date is finally complete. The architect’s Central China Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing, otherwise known as the “reinvention of the skyscraper,” made it on The Simpsons mere weeks before it wrapped in real life. [Architizer; previously ]
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Have a nomination for a jaw-dropping listing that would make a mighty fine House of the Day? Get thee to the tipline and send us your suggestions. We’d love to see what you’ve got. Click here to view the full photogallery. Location: Agoura, Calif. Price: $1,949,000 The Skinny: Located on the inland side of the Malibu hills, this off-the-wall postmodern manse was constructed in 2000 to a whimsical plan, with even more offbeat color choices. While it may look dated now, the home is currently searching for a buyer with close to $2M to spend, so someone will have to be quite serious about this jokey house to plunk down that sort of cash. Set on a private, 4.9-acre hillside lot, the home is impressive on paper, with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, several fireplaces, and a modern kitchen, spread over 7,200 square feet. In practice, it’s a jumbled mess of color and disjointed forms. Perhaps that’s the point, but in the modern marketplace, houses that are this unique often have a hard time selling. · 2401 Kanan Road [Realtor.com]
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House of the Day: Wacky Postmodern Tries to Attract Eccentrics to SoCal Hills
Click here to view the full photogallery. Because everything comes full circle in this crazy wheel of life, the fact that Ellen Degeneres recently bought Brad Pitt’s compound in Malibu, Calif., meant that another celebrity would surely swoop in and scoop up the comedian’s own palace, which hit the market in October. Sure enough, the stars aligned in such a way that Ryan Seacrest has bought the Beverly Hills, Calif., estate, which Degeneres shares with her wife, Portia de Rossi. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the American Idol host paid close to the property’s $49M ask—a staggering price, for sure, but not even close to the $60M the couple originally wanted. And it’s certainly chump change for Seacrest, who has been earning $15M a year (although he may be forced to take a pay cut if his American Idol gig continues past 2012). Now, a bit about the new digs: featured in Architectural Digest this past November, the home was designed by architects Buff & Hensman and later expanded by Will & Grace set designer Melinda Ritz. Inside the 9,200-square-foot, nine-bedroom main house are Degeneres and de Rossi’s impressive art collection—including a Warhol-Basquiat collab, an Ed Ruscha, and a Serge Mouille chandelier—but surely these things will be hauled out and installed in the Next Big Thing. Besides, no one embraces moving around quit like these girls: “The first thing I did when I made money was buy a house,” Degeneres told Arch Digest. “And then—” De Rossi interjects: “Another one. And another one and another one and another one…” · Ryan Seacrest Buying Ellen Degeneres’ $49 Million Estate [The Hollywood Reporter] · All Ellen Degeneres coverage [Curbed National] · AD Visits: Ellen Degeners and Portia de Rossi [Arch Digest] · Did Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi Just Chop $11 Million Off Their Beverly Hills Compound? [Curbed LA]
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Celebrity Real Estate: Ryan Seacrest Drops Tens of Millions on Degeneres Estate
Sure, there are real estate listings ripped from the pages of Architectural Digest, but then there’s one Bethesda, Md., property that is, in the words of the brokerbabble, “Better Than Architectural Digest.” Surely that mint-colored faux-finish in the master bedroom would make Arch Digest editor in chief Margaret Russell stand at attention. [ previously ; Curbed DC]
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Police fatally shot a Queens man who had stabbed himself and his wife during a domestic dispute in Oakland Gardens last night. According to police, the incident happened around 8:30 p.m. Thursday night when the couple’s 17-year-old daughter called 911 after finding her father Samuel Rivers cutting himself with the knife at their 223rd Place home. When cops arrived, they found Samuel and wife Sharon outside the home; Sharon was bleeding from her neck and chest, and was wailing, “I’m dying! I’m going to die!” [ more › ]
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Police Fatally Shoot Queens Man Who Allegedly Stabbed Wife, Himself
Click here to view the full photogallery. For those who truly care about aging and presenting their wine properly, the wine cellar is the ultimate addition to a luxury home. These five properties all come with a wine cellar, but this first one, in Bernardsville, N.J., is particularly elaborate. Modeled after a French wine shop, the subterranean tableau includes a shop front facade, clay bottle storage, and a counter for tastings. The rest of the house is similarly elaborate—which is to say overdone—and has a serious price tag attached : $14.8M. For that, the lucky buyer will be getting a seven-bedroom mansion, originally built in 1896, on 15 acres. (Special thanks to the guys Realtor.com for helping compile this post.) Click here to view the full photogallery. ↑ It might seem unlikely to find a wine cellar on the fifth floor, but in Manhattan, even rich wine collectors have to compromise. This loft at 17 West 17th Street is equipped with a glassed-in wine storage area that can accomodate up to 2,000 bottles. The presentation is as simple as can be, but securing this Big Apple oenophile’s paradise might be more complicated. It’s currently listed for a heady $6.75M, that’s actually up from the previous asking price of $6.585M. The full-floor loft has the potential for five bedrooms and boasts a home automation system controlled by iPhone and iPad. Click here to view the full photogallery. ↑ Not surprisingly, as the home of America’s primary wine producing regions, California has plenty of elaborate wine cellars. In St. Helena, in the heart of Napa Valley, this chateau-style mansion is lacking in the interior listing photo department, but the brokers have made sure to highlight the wine storage, which is arranged around an elegantly inlaid table. Listed for close to $17M, the mansion sits on a treed hillside overlooking vineyards, with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and 46.5 acres of breathing room. Click here to view the full photogallery. ↑ This Malibu, Calif. manse has an unusual take on the wine cellar. Usually, wine is protected from direct sunlight as a means of preservation, but this wine cellar opts for windows, so drinkers can enjoy the wine and the view at the same time. Purists may scoff, but no one is dismissing the asking price of $14.5M. The 8,000-square-foot mansion sits one block from the beach, with 7.8-acre grounds that include a polo field, stables, clay tennis court, and two acres of vineyards. Click here to view the full photogallery. ↑ Not all of the wine cellar-equipped estates have to be old school in their archtitecture. This Laguna Beach, Calif. spread boasts a luxe wine cellar, surrounded by steel-and-glass doors, that looks, in the listing photos, pretty dazzling. The rest of the house is done is a similarly contemporary style, with stunning views of the Pacific. The five-bed, seven-bath mansion is listed for $13M. · 450 Mendham Road [Zillow] · Flatiron’s Most Unusual Wine Cellar Returns for $6.75 Million [Curbed NY] · 256 North Fork Crystal Springs Road [Realtor.com] · 6415 Busch Drive [Realtor.com] · 1115 Emerald Bay [Realtor.com]
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On the Market: Five of the Coolest Wine Cellars on the Market in the U.S.
James Beard was a profoundly orotund sensualist who got famous in the ’50s promoting gourmet French food to middlebrow America through a number of cookbooks and essays—he also co-founded Citymeals-on-Wheels , which delivers food to the home-bound elderly in NYC, as well as an eponymous cooking school. He died in the ’80s, and now there’s a James Beard Foundation that carries on his foodie legacy, operating out of his old West Village townhouse. (To give you a sense of Beard’s flamboyant personality, the upstairs bathroom is floor-to-ceiling mirrors.) Every year the Foundation gives out a bunch of awards at a big pretentious event the food blogs breathlessly fawn over. [ more › ]
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Foodie "Oscars" Fete Gramercy Tavern, PDT And Others, World Yawns