Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Emmy Winning Writer/Producer Terence Winter Lists Beverly Hills Abode

SELLER: Terence Winter
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $6,650,000
SIZE: 5,688 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen chickens, we're going to be brief here today—or at least as brief as a long-winded ol' windbag like Your Mama can be—because our much adored gal pal Sheila Sinn is down from the currently freezing state of Alaska and we've got sights to see, kebabs to nosh, and a great big flask of gin & tonics to start in on.

Anyhoo, the other day, while doing our best to ignore the extreme hoopla that surrounds the Superbowl, Your Mama ran across a white stucco residence in Beverly Hills, CA listed at $6,650,000 and owned, as per property records, by Emmy-winning screenwriter and producer Terence Winter and his wife Rachel

Brooklyn-born Mister Winter started up his ladder of entertainment industry fame and fortune in the 1990s writing for a variety of series that include (but are not limited to) Sister, Sister, Xena: Warrior Princess and Diagnosis: Murder. His big Showbiz break came at the turn of the 21st century when he signed on to write for (and later produce) the HBO mega-hit The Sopranos, which was canceled (or brought to a close or whatever) in 2007. A few dry years followed The Sopranos until Mister Winter created, wrote and produced Boardwalk Empire, the much lauded, very violent and labyrinthine Martin Scorsese-directed crime drama set in prohibition-era Atlantic City, NJ.

Property records indicate Mister and Missus Winter purchased their Bev Hills digs in February 2008 when they shelled out $4,062,500 for the desirably-located 1929 Mediterranean manse that sits on a tight-for-the-zip-code .29 acre Utah-shaped parcel in the same Platinum Triangle pocket as billionaires David Geffen and Ron Burkle, well-divorced couture queen Suzanne Saperstein, action flick star Jackie Chan, and rock star Bruce Springsteen, just to name a few. The Winters bought the property from recently departed Emmy-winning screenwriter, producer and Mad Libs co-creator Leonard Stern (The Honeymooners, Get Smart, Operation Petticoat, and etc.).

A high-walled and gated courtyard with original working fountain and deep covered porch makes a peaceful and private transition from the street to the front door that opens into a long entrance hall that stretches gracefully clear though to the rear of the residence. The impressive but reasonably scaled foyer opens to the formal living room finished with coffee-colored wood floors, wood coffered barrel vaulted ceiling, a carved stone fireplace and banks of French doors that open the room to both the front courtyard and the backyard.

The formal dining room, across the entrance hall from the formal living room, does double duty as a library with a full wall of built-in wood bookshelves. A pair of arched French doors allow for easy flow to an outdoor dining/lounging terrace.

Less formal quarters include a family room with beamed ceiling, built-in entertainment center, wet bar, and a separate temperature-controlled wine room lined floor to ceiling with booze bottle cubbies. The family room adjoins the eat-in kitchen with cozy built-in breakfast banquette, high-gloss black cabinetry with glass-fronted uppers, snow white counter tops and breakfast bar, sizable center work island and a complete suite of commercial-style Viking brand appliances.

The adjacent service wing includes a play room with direct backyard access, a guest or staff suite with full (hall) bathroom, a sky lit laundry room, and an office where Mister Winter displays his quartet of gleaming Emmy statuettes. Listing information states the office could be utilized as a "classic 'man-cave,'" but all the children surely know that Rule #14 in Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Dos and Don'ts emphatically declares that, "A private home that aspires to even a shred of style, taste, or dignity can not, by definition and under any circumstances, contain a space referred to as a 'man-cave' or, worse, a 'mantuary.'"

In addition to the grand staircase in the entrance hall, a curving carved wood rear staircases leads to the the second floor comprised of 3 family bedrooms—two share a Jack & Jill style bathroom, one makes use of a hall bathroom,  plus a fourth so-called "junior master" with vaulted ceiling, sitting area and private facility.

The actual master suite has a high vaulted ceiling, sitting area and vintage-inspired spa-style bathroom with high-gloss black cabinetry, emerald green subway tile accents, grey-veined white marble counter tops and tub surround, heated black and white checked marble floor and party-sized steam shower with built-in tiled bench. A super-sized, boo-teek-style walk-in closet and dressing room (plus additional closet space) will make an average clothes horse blind with envy.

We don't, of course, know a coffee filter from a wooden spoon so we don't know if Mister and Missus Winter plan to buy another west coast abode but we do recall reading somewhere recently—we can't recall just where—that the Winter family has decamped for New York, nearer where Mister Winter's Boardwalk Empire tapes.

listing photos: Prudential California / Beverly Hills

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Mama: This property is located in Beverly Hills... not Bel Air as noted.

Anonymous said...

that dining room cum library is a hot mess. otherwise it's perfection.

Shopgirl said...

$6 million plus for just slightly more than 1/4 acre not on the water is tough to swallow. Platinum triangle...yada, yada.

Anonymous said...

Finally something with taste, beauty, class. The pickings have been very slim lately. Bathroom and kitchen too mannish for the setting but that's easily remedied.

Anonymous said...

Electric blue chairs in the living room? Not for me, thank you. And as a earlier post has it, putting bookshelves in the dining room is simply odd, with no benefit from it at all.

Rosco Mare said...

I like this house alot.

The large houses in this neighborhood are often wedged into their smallish lots like an evil step-sister's foot in Cinderella's glass shoe.

Candice Bergen's former house, once profiled in Architectural Digest, and now owned by Sarah Gilbert, I believe, has built-in bookcases in the dining room. I would like the informality of the look until a curious, stick-fingered dinner guest decides to peruse a book that I patiently waited in line for some celebrity to sign.

Anonymous said...

This is a strange one. Every room and every outside view seems so appealing, until one takes a closer look. Then every one falls apart. Even the living room, with an undeniably gorgeous ceiling, somehow seems cramped and too-narrow. Is it those weird, curved, over-much couches? The interiors generally seem much too shiny, dark and too much like excerpts from a McMansion in the Valley ... which this house is not! The kitchen seems positively souless, which is a bad thing for a kitchen. Shouldn't anyone condemned to till acres of uber-reflective dark green bathroom wall tile while contending with oval pivot mirrors every morning be put on suicide watch on those facts alone? And, just out of curiosity, did the contractor accidentally install the marble checkerboard entryway floor in the master bathroom, right thru to the shower stall?

No, no, no, No, NO! Overall, this house reminds me of something Raymond Chandler wrote: “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

There. I said it and I'm glad!

Bethany said...

It could use a few changes but overall not a bad property.

excitingla said...

i don't really feel like the style flows throughout the house. it feels sort of "miss-matched" the kitchen, the bathroom, and the dining room feel like 3 completely different looks - modern, contemporary and traditional. kind of disappointing actually.