Jake Shears Lists Los Feliz Architectural (EXCLUSIVE)
A 1937 Streamline Moderne residence nestled into the foothills of L.A.’s Los Feliz area, owned by alt-pop singer/songwriter Jake Shears, has hit the market at $2.248 million. The famously energetic and frequently porn-stached 40-year-old singer and musician, on indefinite hiatus from the powerhouse early aughts glam-rock band Scissor Sisters, purchased the eye-catching, architecturally significant home in 2013 with his then-boyfriend, accomplished documentary filmmaker Chris Moukarbel (“Gaga: Five Foot Two”), from abstract painter Beatrice Findlay for $1.92 million.
Defined by a semi-circular, glass-block tower that houses a winding stone staircase and entered amid a variety of spiky plants via a petite, elevated porch, the three-story white-stucco villa is widely attributed to accomplished if somewhat unsung architect William Kesling and known in architecture circles as Ulm House. With many original details intact, there are three and potentially four bedrooms and four carefully preserved or re-created vintage-tiled bathrooms in a smidgen more than 2,300 square feet.
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Adjoining living and dining rooms with honey-toned hardwood floors and gigantic, curtain-free steel-trimmed windows that extend all the way to the ceiling flow easily out to a terrazzo terrace with over-the-treetops canyon and city lights views. There’s an angled fireplace and built-in banquette seating in the living room and the dining room, simply but strikingly furnished with a colorfully contemporary take on a picnic table, is open over a short peninsula snack bar to an unquestionably compact but generously windowed and fully up-to-date kitchen. A secluded library/office easily converted to a bedroom and nearby full bathroom with a kooky peach and burgundy color scheme complete the main level. There are two en suite bedrooms on the top floor, the master with a pass-through dressing area and a private terrace with open view, while, in addition to a street-level two-car garage, the ground floor contains an en suite guest bedroom with walk-in closet and a family room with a wet bar that spills out to a long and slender faux-grassed patio surrounded by mature plantings under several strands of overhead lights.
Ulm House is represented by Penny Muck, Nancy Osborne and Tami Halton of Halton Pardee + Partners.
Shears, who made his 2017 Broadway debut in “Kinky Boots” and released his debut solo album last year along with a memoir, “Boys Keep Swinging,” a reference to David Bowie’s 1979 song of the same name, keeps an apartment in New Orleans where in 2016 he paid $265,000 for a discreetly under-the-radar one-bed/one-bath condo of not even 900 square feet in the hipster heart of the funky Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.
Launch Gallery: Glam-Rocker Jake Shears Lists Los Feliz Streamline Moderne
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