My Fave Home in the World: We’ve Got a Real Estate Deal For You That Will Make the Easter Bunny Jump Through, Well, Glass Walls!

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The Glass Pavilion bathUpdate, 10:23 pm: Am told this house must be sold within the next 30 days!

Happy Easter Monday and I hope you all had a beautiful Easter Sunday! My leak is fixed, Jo is enjoying her family, and I am bringing you an Easter treat that will make your heart beat faster. From Robbie Briggs come inside word that my most favorite home in the entire world is not just on the market, not just reduced, but the deal of a lifetime!The Glass House ext The Glass House LR The Glass House autosThe Glass House dining

Remember the Glass Pavillion? No April Fool’s joke here. The initial asking price was well over $35,000,000 WITHOUT cars or furnishings, then it was reduced to $19,995,000. Now I hear the home can be had for even less — like $13,900,000 and sources tell me may be negotiable even at that price! That’s a wee bit over the bank note. Robbie has all the deets, so go to him right now if you are interested.  (That’s [email protected].) Anyone want to create a consortium of buyers for our new second home in Montecito? Count me IN!

As I said when I first wrote of it, this home was my Jedediah Leland/Citizen Kane moment: this house is my “girl in the white dress”. It flashes me back to Mies Van Der Roh’s Farnsworth House, near where I grew up. The Glass Pavilion was designed by Steve Hermann, and it is almost 14,000 square feet! A little big, and I’d need some stock in Windex, but I am still head over heels in love with this property! When interviewed by Santa Barbara Magazine, Steve, presumably still the owner, said he set out to design the  most minimalist house ever designed.Glass-House-1-223x300.jpg Steve

“There’s nothing inhibiting the flow of light and space. You are completely enveloped in nature,” says Steve, a longtime designer of high-end spec homes in Los Angeles, who first embarked on creating the Glass Pavilion six years ago.”The Glass House bath 1 The Glass House cars The Glass Pavilion bath

Set within a 3.5 acre estate of oak groves, this almost entirely glass home allows occupants to be enveloped by nature. As you drive down the long gated driveway, it slowly comes into view, like a miracle.

And it appears weightless, through the use of massive structural steel beams one of which alone is the weight of ten Range Rovers, as if it hovers above the expansive lawn. As you can imagine, the budget to build this home was virtually limit-less. Rumor has it the owners have more than thirty million jammed in it! It took six years to complete — well, this is California. Would have taken half as long in Texas. The glass panels are all created of Star Fire glass, an incredibly clear glass usually reserved for museum-quality jewelry displays. Kitchens and baths by Varena, Poliform and Antonio Lupi. The home has five bedrooms, five and a half baths, grand hallway and large wine room. (Do you see that walk-through shower?) The glass pavilion includes an art gallery where the owners currently display their vintage car collection. I’m told the 1955 silver Mercedes Gullwing is worth $ 1 million alone. Which gives me an idea: let’s draft a contract and ask that the cars remain with the house! The space is so generous it is capable of holding up to 32 cars within its walnut-lined walls. I mean, you could practically hold the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance in there!

This home is modernism at it’s best. It’s a redefining structure within modernism,  a benchmark building that sets the bar as to what modernism is and can be. And the location,   780 Ashley Road, is in one of the most beautiful parts of southern California, Santa Barbara. Reminds me of my Valencia days...

 

 

Candy Evans, founder and publisher of CandysDirt.com, is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters.

17 Comments

  1. Mojo on May 28, 2016 at 3:33 am

    Yeah but no pool???!!

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