Malibu Modern in The Rockaways...That's Right, the Rockaways

SELLER: Brett Morgen and Debra Eisenstadt
LOCATION: The Rockaways, Queens, NY
PRICE: $4,495,000
SIZE: 5,600 square feet, 3 bedrooms 2 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama knows some people–a lot of people, actually–who have lived in New York City their entire adult lives and never made the trip down Brooklyn's fantastically diverse Flatbush Avenue to The Rockaways, a collection of mostly working class communities in Queens that line up along a narrow spit of sand barely three blocks wide at some points. For many, Manhattanites in particular, The Rockaways might as well be the moon since it seems terribly far away not to mention an entirely different socio-cultural world. Pity that. Besides having about 4-miles of gorgeous ocean frontage with wide sandy beaches–some of which are, believe it or not, pristine–The Rockaways are a fascinating slice of the amazing pie that makes up New York City.

There are basically three parts of the Rockaways: Breezy Point, the Far Rockaways, and everything in between. The Far Rockaways, at the eastern end directly south and in the flight path of J.F.K. International Airport, was once a summertime getaway for rich and famous types like W.C. Fields and Mae West. It also happens to be where big bad Bernie Madoff and his wifey Ruth grew up. Time hasn't been kind to the once chic Far Rockaways which today is a pretty rough and tumble jumble of neighborhoods that range from pretty nice to downright scary.

At the far western end of the Rockaways is Breezy Point, a small gated cooperative enclave that in 2001 the New York Times called "the whitest place in New York" due to its 98% Caucasian population. The Rockaways–and Breezy Point in particular–have long attracted a large number of members of the New York City police and fire departments and heaps and hordes of people of Irish descent, which has led to The Rockaways sometimes being referred to as the "Irish Riviera."

In between Breezy Point and the Far Rockaways are a collection of neighborhoods that range from the gang infested Hammel Houses to working class Rockaway Park to the upscale Belle Harbor made famous in November of 2001 when American Airlines flight 587 crashed into the neighborhood resulting in the deaths of more than 260 people.

Nowadays, mixed in with all the fire people, po-po, Irish, and working class locals who flock to the beach in the summertime to escape the crushing humidity are city folks and scads of arty farty hipster types who have discovered that it's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to get to The Rockaways on the A-train than it is to get to the Hamptons, Fire Island, or even Robert Moses State Park on Long Island.

Straddling the border between the upscale Belle Harbor and the even more upscale Neponsit neighborhoods at the western end of The Rockaways, a somewhat out of its element ocean front glass and cedar sided contemporary is currently on the market with an asking price of $4,495,000. The owners of the house, which was designed and completed in 2008 by New York City architect Edward Mills, is Oscar nominated (documentary) filmmaker Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture, Chicago 10, Say It Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America, On the Ropes) and his wife Debra Eisenstadt who in addition to being an actor, director, producer, and writer (Oleanna, The Limbo Room) also happens to be the granddaughter Benjamin Eisenstadt, the food condiment packaging tycoon who developed the formula for and designed the pink packet for the sugar substitute Sweet & Low.

The movie making couple picked up their Belle Harbor house in September of 2006 for $3,400,000 according to property records. The Morgen-Eisenstadts are the peeps responsible for the current contemporary architectural iteration of the residence that stylistically speaking could be picked up and happily plunked down in Malibu, CA or the gay gay gay Pines community on Fire Island, NY. Listing information indicates the modern house, a collection of solid masses, transparent planes and unexpected voids fitted together like an intricate puzzle, measures around 5,600 square feet spread over 4 floors and includes 3-4 bedrooms–depending on what one considers a bedroom–and 2 full and 3 half poopers.

The home is entered via an exterior staircase that climbs up to the first floor from the street level. Just beyond the front door is a small but proper entrance hall with coat closet and powder pooper. Several steps down from the entrance hall a long and sort of narrow living/dining room has over-sized windows that looks out onto dune, beach and ocean views. The floors are bee-yoo-tee-fully distressed French oak and the fireplace is a mass of sand colored stacked stone. Since the view is the undisputed star of the show here, artworks in the room are nil and furnishings include little more than a charcoal colored sectional sofa, that like the house is a collection of masses and voids in furniture form, and sculptural rough-edged wooden coffee and dining tables in the stunning style of master woodworker George Nakashima.

The clean lined kitchen/family room has stainless steel counter tops and back splash, concrete floors, and high grade stainless steel appliances wisely juxtaposed against more organic feeling wood cabinetry with flat fronts, visually textured exposed grain, and an ashy/bleached finish. A work island with Wolf range and raised breakfast counter separates the kitchen from the small family room area where a second fireplace with sand colored stacked stone surround is flanked by wood-framed glass doors that slide open to a blue stone terrace with outdoor fireplace and a small but heated ocean view swimming pool.

The lower level of the home, a basement sort of space that's actually on grade with the street, is comprised of a single car garage, large play room, half-pooper, a trio of large storage rooms and a small but state of the art media room with blood red walls, a titanic 12' x 7' screen, and cozy, red velvet covered sectional sofas.

A steep stair rises from behind the kitchen to an airy and light infused second floor hall where there hangs a portrait of Edward Kennedy by Andy Warhol and off of which open the three primary bedrooms. There are two smaller ocean view bedrooms that share a Jack and Jill style pooper with an ocean side window, and a master suite with vaulted ceiling, fireplace, huge walk in closet, and small but dee-luxe sky lit and ocean view pooper with separate tub and frameless glass shower. A wall of sliders opens the bedroom to a semi-private ocean side deck with glass railing.

Another steep stair case with glass rail and open treads leads to the third and top floor where a narrow "L" shaped room opens to a small terrace, the floor of which is punched by two sky lights that look directly down into the master pooper, a situation that could get a little ugly and embarrassing. The top level also includes another half-pooper and glassed in office area that gives way to a large roof terrace where the Morgen-Eisenstadt's managed–no doubt at considerable expense–to hoist up a free standing hot tub. While this hot tub on the roof is making the ocean and hot tub loving Dr. Cooter wet his pants with glee and envy, Your Mama would like to have seen the sellers spend a few more clams enclosing the hot tub in materials more in line with the gray cedar vertical that clads the exterior of the house. None the less, the roof deck has 360 degree views that in addition to unobstructed and mesmerizing vista of the Atlantic Ocean there are great views of the twinkling lights of New York City, planes landing at J.F.K., and the Verrazano Bridge.

When the house was renovated, the current owners, that would be Mister Morgen and Miz Eisenstadt, spent big to install a 9-zone central air and radiant heat system, a security system that includes six surveillance cameras, and a 13-zone Crestron home automation system through which discreet panels on the walls of each room control the home's lighting, audio and video systems, as well as the iPod and Sirius radio set ups.

Perhaps Mister Morgan and Miz Eisenstadt have realistically responded to a still sagging real estate market, or maybe because they recognize that in this stiff market the financially qualified buying pool for a house like this in a location like The Rockaways is slim at best, or possibly just because they're eager to move on to wherever they're going next, the asking price was recently chopped a couple of times from $5,379,000 to it's current price tag of $4,995,000.

No offense to the fire, po-po, and hipster people who love it there, but we're not convinced that for 4 and some million clams The Rockaways is the location of our ocean front dreams. Plus we're certain our imperious house gurl Svetlana would sooner slit our wrists than contend with the fingerprints and pooch nose juice that stainless steel and exterior glass railings tend to attract in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's home. But dah-uhm children, this house is right up Your Mama's architectural alley. We're a bit iffy on a few things such as the tee-vee mounted above the sliders in the master and the switch to a different kind of wood floor in the upstairs poopers is awkward at best, but we're swooning over the glittering white walls that provide a barely there backdrop for the mix of hard edged and organic elements that play themselves out throughout the house and, of course, that speck-tack-u-lar view of the ocean across the undulating grassy dunes.

listing photos: Corcoran

ScarJo and RyRey Snatch Up a Mid-Century Modern

BUYER: Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,900,000
SIZE: 2,835 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last month all the celebrity real estate gossips were a-twitter and agog about how ever more unlucky in real estate actress Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Lost In Translation) lost her shirt, her skirt and her Agent Provocateur panties when she sold her big 0l' Mediterranean style bachelorette pad in Los Angeles at a loss in excess of $3,000,000.

That's right puppies, Miss Johansson had a perfectly good if not great 7 bedroom and 7 pooper mansion in Los Angeles, CA that she bought in May of 2007 for $7,000,000. Two years later the curvy actress caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle so bad that she was compelled to sell the house for an even-steven $4,000,000, a stunning three million dollar bang to her bank accounts not counting renovation costs and the fat real estate fees. Of course Your Mama don't know a lemon from a coffee pot but given that this wasn't the first time Miss Johansson sold a property at a loss Your Mama has to wonder if the woman is just a financial fruit bat or if there something more purposeful and clever at play like maybe she needed the gigantic write off for her her taxes.

Anyhoo and whatever the case, sell at a huge loss she did and now word is starting to slip-slide down the real estate gossip grapevine that Miss Johansson and her well-formed if a bit too ripped actor man-mate Ryan Reynolds have shelled out a few million smackers for a new house just a couple hills over from the one she just sold at an airplane hangar sized loss.

According to several of Your Mama's better connected sources ScarJo and RyRey recently closed on a mid-century modern style house designed in 1968 by noted southern California architects Buff & Hensman. The deal for the single story contemporary located in the hills of Los Feliz with big views across the twinkling lights of Tinseltown went down last week, according to property records, for $2,900,000. That a person would pay a few thousand clams more than the asking price for a house in today's topsy turvy market is a bit of rarity, but according to property records they did indeed pay $51,000 more than the last known asking price of $2,849,000.

If Your Mama hauls out our bejeweled abacus and flicks and clicks the well worn beads we figure that when the $3,0000,000+ loss of Missus Reynold's bacherlorette pad on Senalda Road is added to the purchase price of the lovebirds' new nest, the real price of their new digs is more than $5,900,000. Let's be honest chickens, these two lookers could have easily opted to stay put in the house on Senalda Road and waited out the market hoping and praying for better real estate days. But if we've said it once Your Mama has said it four million times, who are we to question or understand the wacky real estate ways of the rich and famous?

Listing information for the well preserved property we hear ScarJo and RyRey just bought shows that the low profile pad measures 2,835 square feet and includes just 2 bedrooms and 3 poopers. In addition to the guest bedroom and private master suite that features its own walled mini-garden, listing information also indicates that when originally built the house had a total of 4 bedrooms but two of the secondary bedrooms were subsequently combined and put into service as a library/office space.

The front of the property has an un-gated black-top motor court with front facing two-car garage all of which, Your Mama imagines will soon be protected by high hedges, an electronically controlled access gate, and a state of the art surveillance system. A covered walk from the driveway leads through a small planted courtyard to the front door. The home's primary living spaces face the back yard and the panoramic view. The large living room retains much of the home's original features such as hardwood floors, a clean lined brick fireplace, and wood beamed ceiling. A long wall of floor to ceiling glazing allows for a "seamless" visual flow between the indoors and the outdoors, which of course was a primary objective with many of the architects who operated in what we now consider the mid-century modern milieu.

Situated on the same axis as the living room along the back side of the house is the renovated kitchen that manages to maintain a style dialogue with the original house while incorporating all the modern conveniences expected in a multi-million dollar home such as high quality cabinetry and high grade stainless steel appliances that include double ovens and a side-by-side fridge and freezer combo that probably cost more than a Mini Cooper. The kitchen is open not only to the wall of glass that sucks up the view on the back side of the house, but also the dining area and adequately sized corner family room that, like the living room, is wrapped in floor to ceiling glass panes that open to the backyard and the view that, on a good day, extends all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Extra deep overhangs help to modulate light and shade part of the deck that runs along the back of the back of the house and steps down to a flat grassy yard, many sided swimming pool, and adjacent sunbathing deck where ScarJo and RyRey can tan their slender movie camera friendly bodies. There does not appear to be a spa attached to the pool which is a bit of a problem. Your Mama does not care to sit in a boiling vat of water like some sort of damn lobster about to be cooked and eaten, but the Dr. Cooter does and a yard like this with a view like that is calling out for a hot tub, perhaps even one of those round old-school redwood types surrounded by ferns and candles like it was 19 damn 72.

Anyhoodles, what if any renovation plans ScarJo and RyRey have for their newly acquired mid-century modern remains to be seen but Your Mama hopes that they'll choose to retain and maintain what architectural integrity the house has. We just think it's kind of nice when people show some residential restraint and leave architectural well enough alone. Before all you architecture snobs get your panties in a kerfuffle recognize that Your Mama understands that the house isn't exactly a stellar example of mid-century modern style or, frankly, even one of Buff & Hensman's better projects. However, in a city where too many people don't seem to think twice about swinging the wrecking ball at a multi-million dollar house in order to make way for a monstrous beast of a mansion–just look what Jeffrey Katzenberg is doing over there in Beverly Hills where he paid a bone chilling $35,000,000 for an 8,704 square foot house built in 1965 that he's knocking down in order to build his own gargantuan Barbie Dream House–it's just nice to preserve some properties for the architectural record books.

Property records and about a bazillion reports reveal that prior to Miss Johansson becoming Missus Reynolds, she laid out $2,100,000 for a midtown Manhattan penthouse pied a terre that measures a modest 1,270 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms, 2 poopers, and a large terrace with glittery city views. At the time of the purchase it was was widely rumored and oft reported that ScarJo went prowling for a penthouse apartment because the immediate neighbors around the West Village apartment she was leasing at the time were all bent out of shape about her constant cigarette smoking.

There have been a myriad of recent reports that ScarJo and RyRey bought a cruddy little farmette somewhere in Louisiana that they're renovating with an eye towards eco-friendly things like a solar electrical system but honestly butter beans, we don't know nuthin' about that. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't.

listing photos: Deasy Penner & Partners

Keith and Kidman Get a New Krib in Manhattan

BUYER: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $10,000,000
SIZE: 3,248 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Word on the celebrity real estate street is that bizzy as a beaver Oscar winning Aussie actress Nicole Kidman (Nine, Bewitched, Cold Mountain, The Hours) and her Grammy award winning country-pop music crooning huzband Keith Urban are moving into the same high profile New York City building as the Dolce and Gabbana boys.

Last fall it was widely reported here, there, and everywhere that smooth pated Italian fashion queen Domenico Dolce, through a trust, forked over a blistering $29,500,000 to purchase two doo-plex penthouse units of the critically acclaimed Annabelle Selldorf designed building recently erected on the corner of 11th Avenue and West 24th Street, at the edge of the heart of the Chelsea Arts District and across the street from the Gagosian Gallery. 14 of the building's 16 apartments, some of the children may recall, comes with a private 300 square foot "En-Suite Sky Garage™", accessed by driving one's luxury automobile into a giant key-lock elevator that magically lifts the car up to the same level as the the apartment to which it's deeded.

According to the most recent reports, the Australian born Kidman-Urbans plunked down some big American bucks for a doo-plex unit that measures 3,248 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms, 3.5 poopers, and two city view loggias. Miz Kidman and Mister Urban appear to have drove a hard real estate bargain because the puffy lipped actress and her flat iron loving husband reportedly snatched up their new doo-plex pied a terre in the Big Apple for $10,000,000, a figure that our bejeweled abacus indicates is a 20% reduction off the $12,500,000 asking price.

The main living spaces are located on the doo-plex unit's upper floor and include a 20-foot by 22-foot living room with western views over the Hudson River towards New Jersey, and a combination dining room and a gore-may kitchen with folding oiled teak panels that when closed conceal the kitchen equipment. Just beyond the kitchen/dining room, a large study/bedroom with walk-in closet and private pooper has Hudson River views to the west and opens to one of the two covered covered loggias that anchor the eastern corners of the doo-plex . A breezeway–a hallway really–with built in storage closets and a powder pooper links the two loggias and opens into the kitchen as well as to the single car garage in the sky.

The lower floor is accessed by a dramatic staircase that descends from the living room down into a double height great room with two walls of floor to ceiling glass with double glass doors that slide open to glass balustrades that obliterate any visual barrier between the interior spaces and the glittering and enviable views. A guest bedroom with en-suite pooper sits in the north east corner and the master bedroom includes a wall of closets, dressing area and large windowless pooper with teak cabinetry and floors, double sinks sitting on a counter top of imported French glazed lavastone Pyrolave, acid etched mirrors, separate glass enclosed shower, and freestanding honed granite soaking tub.

Amenities in the sleek stainless steel and cast gunmetal glazed terra cotta clad tower that was carefully designed to maintain an architectural dialogue with the industrial lofts and buildings that surround it include a 24/7 attended lobby, key-lock elevators, cold storage for food deliveries, a second floor fitness center with treatment room, Hudson River views, and terraces, and, of course, those private garages.

In addition to Domenico Dolce and the Kidman-Urbans, other owners of residences in the state of the art building include interior designer Jamie Drake, a man blessedly unafraid of color who sold his exuberant Flatiron District loft last year for $2,945,000, and real estate agent extraordinaire Leonard Steinberg.

Prior to coughing up the cash for this new doo-plex condo, Miz Kidman leased a number of high profile apartments including the old Lenny Kravtiz penthouse in SoHo just picked up by Alicia Keyes and Swiz Beatz, another penthouse in SoHo formerly owned by tennis ace Boris Becker and now owned by chat queen Kelly Ripa and her hunky man-mate Mark Consuelos, and another large apartment in the same Chelsea building that Your Mama and the Doctor Cooter once called home.

The alabaster skinned actress and her diminutive huzband own several luxurious residences around the world including a contemporary pile in the same Beverly Hills neighborhood as Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, and Jessica Simpson and a 10,925 square foot beast with 7 bedrooms, 8 full and 2 half poopers in Nashville, TN that originally all us real estate gossips thought was purchased by Jessica Simpson.

Miz Kidman and Mister Urban also own a few plum and pricey properties Down Under. In the summer of 2008 it was widely reported that Mister and Missus Kidman-Urban dropped around $6,500,000 (AUS) for a 110 acre spread called Bunya Hill in Sutton Forest, a sleepy and swank enclave in the Southern Highlands about 1.5 hours outside of Sydney.

In the spring of 2009 Miz Kidman dumped her digs in the Darling Point area for $13,200,000 (AUS) after first listing the 4 bedroom waterfront villa a year before with the rumored asking price for $20,000,000 (AUS). The Kidman-Urbans subsequently scooped up a $6,500,000 (AUS) doo-plex penthouse apartment on the 21st floor of a converted office building with panoramic views of the scenic Sydney Harbor.

listing photos and floor plan: Prudential Elliman