Richard King Re-Lists Holmby Hills Estate
SELLERS: Richard and Lauren King LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA PRICE: $65,000,000 SIZE: 17,000-ish square feet, 8 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Some of the children who have been hanging around Your Mama’s little online endeavor for a while may recall that several years ago a well-connected informant we called Pasta Primavera told us that Richard and Lauren King were fixing to list their sumptuous, picture perfect spread in L.A.’s hoity-toity Holmby Hills ‘hood for $65 million.
Almost as soon as we let that real estate cat out of the bag the property popped up on the open market, with an asking price of — you got it — $65 million. Eventually, with no serious buyers ready to close the deal, the property was taken off the open market and — lo and beyond — it reappeared this week with a by now quite familiar $65 million price tag.
Those who don’t play in entertainment industry sandbox may not recognize Richard King’s name but he is the King in King World Productions, the former television syndication juggernaut founded by his father and folded into CBS in 2007.
As we catalogued back in 2011, Mister and Missus King’s elegantly imposing Georgian-style manse was originally built in 1938 has a long celebrity pedigree. The property’s first owner was the occasionally controversial actress and comedienne Fanny Brice and was later owned by music mogul Jerry Moss and his wife, Sandra. Oscar-winning producer Alan Ladd Jr. (The Man in the Iron Mask, Braveheart, The Brady Bunch Movie) also owned it for a bit and, in April of 1998, sold the estate to rags to riches advertising tycoon Dennis Holt and his wife, Brooks, who in turn sold it in July 2001 for $15,000,000 to Mister and Missus King.
The Kings had the tasteful and dignified residence worked over — and by worked over we mean all but entirely re-built — by the fine and accomplished folk at Ferguson & Shamamian Architects. Missus King did up the day-core herself and the 17,000-square-foot result was later photographed in glossy glory for Architectural Digest. Current digital marketing materials show there are 8 bedrooms, 8 full and 6 half bathrooms and more than half a dozen fireplaces. (For the record, the L.A. County Tax Man shows the main house has four bedrooms and ten bathrooms in 11,660 square feet.)
Several outbuildings dot the gated and heavily fortified 1.91-acre property, according to listing details, and include a self-contained guest house originally designed by John Elgin Woolf that Your Mama is quite certain is larger and more luxurious than the homes of most people as well as sizable pool house with gym.
The grounds, conceived according to A.D. by noted landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power, knit the multi-acre and many-structured estate together with a succession of garden rooms, shaded porches, wide terraces that extend the living space outdoors, expansive lawns, a rectilinear koi pond with bluestone coping, and a uniform canopy of mature California sycamores. A grid of raised planting beds tucked into triangle of land behind the lighted tennis court contains rose and vegetable gardens where Missus King says she grows some of the best tomatoes in Los Angeles.
There are not many images included with current digital marketing materials but, iffin any of y’all are interested, a couple of years ago, when the house was being shopped off-market, the Forbes peeps published a rather delectable cache of both interior and exterior images. Missus King’s website also has some pretty juicy pictures of the estate. They’re worth a look, butter beans…
By: Variety
