Leonardo DiCaprio Lists Hillside Hacienda Above L.A.’s Silver Lake
By Mark David LOS ANGELES (Variety.com)
An unassuming, Spanish-style residence in the ever-more expensive, boho-chic hills above L.A’s Silver Lake Reservoir, owned via trust by Tinseltown A-lister and long occupied by a family member, has come to market at $1.749 million.
Built in the early 1930s and partly obscured behind a slightly unkempt tangle of trees and shrubbery, the 3,560-square-foot house sits on a sloped, .15-acre street-to-street lot with four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms.
The child actor turned 2016 Oscar winner, currently filming Quentin Tarantino’s ensemble crime mystery “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” paid not quite $770,000 for the hacienda-inspired villa almost 20 years ago, shortly after he rocketed to international superstardom in “The Titanic.”
A high-walled and securely gated courtyard entry features a lily pad topped koi pond and colorful, Spanish tile accents. With imported carved wood doors and some original detailing intact, the nearly 100-year-old house opens to a pint-sized foyer that steps down to a spacious, wood-floored living room with a tile-surrounded fireplace, several sets of French doors and heavy wood beams across the high ceiling.
The formal dining room has elegant if decoratively outdated parquet wood floors while the kitchen, awash almost entirely in an unusual abundance of white ceramic tiles bordered in dark blue and starburst patterned tiles, is nicely sized but could use a comprehensive update.
The house also includes a library/study, at least one bathroom strikingly sheathed in well-preserved black and emerald-green vintage tile work and a master suite that encompasses a sitting room with fireplace and several pointed arch display niches and doorways.
The lazy, laden and/or infirm will appreciate the elevator that services three levels including an expansive, semi-subterranean level that incorporates workshop and hobby areas plus a bunker-like garage that will park three or more cars. Outside the back of the house and atop the garage where it overlooks a swimming pool under an unusually crenellated roofline, an arched loggia features a wrought iron fencing, a shimmering, pressed tin ceiling treatment and a drop down movie screen and projection television system.
Unsurprisingly for someone who for the last several decades has commanded upwards of $20 million or more to star in a tent-pole studio production, DiCaprio maintains a sprawling, baller-style portfolio of residential properties.
In addition to side-by-side properties high in the Bird Streets ‘hood above the Sunset Strip, his Los Angeles holdings include two beachfront properties in Malibu, one of them scenically sited above Paradise Cove and acquired in late 2016 for $23 million , and a 4,600-square-foot faux-timbered 1920s Tudor in the Los Feliz area scooped up earlier this year for $4.91 million from architecture and design savvy electronic music wunderkind Moby.
So the celebrity real estate scuttlebutt goes, the deep-pocketed leading man generously bought the house for a family member. Outside of Los Angeles, DiCaprio owns an iconic, celeb-pedigreed Donald Wexler-designed mid-century modern pavilion in Palm Springs he snatched up in 2014 for $5.23 million and makes available as a high-end short-term vacation rental along with several luxury condos in lower Manhattan.
Listing photos: Hilton & Hyland
