Mom blames Tori for Aaron Spelling's death

[Sylph]

OMG! Jef Greene's about to get a Le Belvédère clone! It's called Palazzo d'Amore and is on Lania Lane, not far from Franklin Canyon Reservoir and Beverly Ridge estates. Mohamed Hadid is the developer, of course:

http://www.mohamedhadid.com/projects.php?category_id=3&project_id=200603200001

Almost finished, if not already.

[Sylph]

[alphanguy74]

What's confusing me about this photo is the hillsides around the estate. At the link you posted above, it seems like there are homes right below the area that appears to have been "scalped". Wouldn't this be a mudslide issue, and sediment and runoff issues on the properties down the hill?

[Sylph]

Houses are all around it (below). It's apparently finished and Jeff Greene and his wife Mei Sze lived there, CNBC even filmed the interiors in 2008 (only some, Mei Sze's controlled what was being shot), but the videos are offline now. Then it was listed for lease, it even had its own website, it's $250,000 per month. It looks dreary.

[Sylph]

In other (two months old) news, hotel queen Leona Helmsley's Connecticut Jacobean-style palace, Dunnellen Hall, sold with a 72% discount, LOL. It's a 40-acres of land with a manor of almost 22,000 square feet. HQ pics:

http://www.businessi...ur-helicopter-1

[Sylph]

More stairway clones:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2008/09/new_to_market_richard_landrydesigned_chateau.php?o=11#chateau-3

http://tours5.vht.com/Viewer/PhotoGallery.aspx?ListingID=1190169&Style=IDX

[alphanguy74]

72% discount? I must chortle at this. There are aspects of Leona's estate that are nice, others badly done and tacky. the grounds as a whole look LOVELY, at least from the air... of course, this is in Conncecticut, not the barren wasteland that is Southern California, so you can have trees and grass and they can thrive and look GOOD. But once again, the driveway comes right up to the front door. This simply mystifies me, as virtually nobody around here does that.. and i've seen the estates of Ewing Kaufman (owner of the Kansas City Royals) and the Hall family (Owners of Hallmark) closeup. I like the brown living room in Leona's house... the green living room would be ok if it were a different shade of green. The study is GHASTLY. The landscape lighting looks nice, however. I like the staircase itself, and the red carpeting, but everything around it is far too TAUPE. I realize that those walls in her foyer and entryway areas are some type of stone, but the size and way they are cut makes them look like concrete block... just sayin. And as far as that table in the foyer, who ever thought that three heads of broccoli in terra cotta pots is decorative?

[DaytimeFan]

Leona Helmsley was an evil old whore. I hope whoever bought the house bulldozes it. She'd be rolling in her grave.

[Sylph]

Well, it's one of very, very few surviving old-style estates in Greenwich. I hate it, but I think alphanguy makes some good points. The colours are horrid: that pool-bottom turquoise just isn't working. Same for the fountain and that tarmac, asphalt or whatever it is that surrounds it.

And Leona didn't build it – it was a gift from one industrialist to his daughter.

Alphanguy, the Hall family live in Mission Hills, right? And Kauffman's heirs?

[alphanguy74]

Yes... Mission Hills is a beautiful place. It's what I refer to as "Old Money". When I worked as assistant manager at Soil Service Garden Center, we delivered to both estates many times. The Hall family always had us save the LARGEST christmas tree off the truck for them, and we delivered, set up, and strung the lights on it for them. Soil Service pretty much had all the business from Mission hills, as it was the only garden center left in close proximity. All the others moved out to suburbia and their McMansions. Ewing Kauffman had his own private gardener, and the gardener would simply come to the store, pick out whatever he needed, and we delivered it. The owner of Soil service was too damn cheap to buy a new dump truck (This dump truck was a 1963 model, and this was 1992)and one day when I delivered a load of bark mulch to Ewing Kauffman's estate, the truck wouldn't start and had to be towed away. THEN, he finally bought a new one after that embarrassment. Both Ewing and Muriel were really lovely people, not snobby like one might think. And as far as that driveway of Leona's... it seems to be asphalt, or blacktop as we call it around here. And it's my favorite material for a driveway. I like it because the darkness receeds from the eye, and lets the house and landscaping take center stage, plus it has the added benefit of the ice and snow melting off quickly when sunshine hits it. but in her case, when you have a such a large amount of it, with no lawn or shrubbery to buffer it, it just becomes this opressive expanse of foreboding darkness, it looks so industrial. That's the main thing many of these homes are lacking, and that is WARMTH.

[Sylph]

<span style="font-size:105%;">Lovely story, alphan. So Kauffmans too lived in Mission Hills? Architecturally, are both mansions something remarkable or perhaps nothing special?

I love asphalt too, but somehow it doesn't mash well with this sort of house and surroundings.

But thanks to Yo' Mama, I found a house whose interiors (and exteriors and the garden) I like – Sloane House. It's on Old Church Street in Chelsea, London and Bernie's daughter is apparently buying it. For a whopping £60m or around $100m. I really like it! </span>

[Sylph]

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[SFK]

I like the cold Asa Buchanan stone foyer and further soapy points for that office with the tiger chairs and lion picture and those cavernous Adam Chandler tunnels leading to that wine cellar where it looks like Leones and a group of Shriners sacrificed babies and planned world domination while sipping Malbec.

Leona is buried a couple of towns over in Sleepy Hollow. A friend of ours has family buried there and she took a cell phone pic of Leona's news-making $$$ mausoleum with its stained glass window of the New York skyline. No doubt the pampered pooch will be laid to rest there with her and Harry.

[Sylph]

And Sloane House?

[Sylph]