SELLER: Whitney HoustonLOCATION: North Gate Road, Mendham Township, NJ
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 12,561 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Extraordinary living space abound in this stunning home on a peaceful, gated 5 acre lot. Soaring ceilings, abundant natural light, and circular-themed interior spaces are the hallmarks of this home.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last night Your Mama received a covert communique from from Yougotta B. Serious that Grammy winning-pop-gospel Whitney Houston has listed her former home in Mendham Township, NJ with an asking price of $2,500,000. In addition to a brick faced mansion that troubled couple owned in Alpharetta, GA, this circular themed house was on occasion featured in the high-lariously camp, jaw dropping and more than likely drug fueled reality program Being Bobby Brown that ran for only one season in 2005 on the Bravo channel.
At that time, Ms. Houston and all her people were still denying that the singer was smoking crack, freebasing cocaine or partaking in any other kind of illegal substance. Oh children, remember Ms. Houston's mortifying and absurd interview with Diane Sawyer when she said, "Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack...Crack is whack!" Oh yes, that was some good tee-vee times. Good times. Maybe it makes us callous and shallow, but there is nothing so amusing to Your Mama than a famous person–or even better, a politician–doing a terrible job of lying like a rug right up on the national tee-vee.
Ms. Houston has since admitted publicly–on Oprah Winfrey's show, natch–that Bobby Brown was her drug of choice and that together they were hooked on the cocaine and the mary-jane. She told the Big O that, "It was me and him together. You know, we were partners. And that's what my high was. Him. He and I being together. And whatever we did, we did together. No matter what, we did it together." Lo-ward have mercy, even sober this bee-hawtcha is all kinds of crazy.
Anyhoo, prior to her lost years as a dope fiend, Ms. Houston sold millions and millions of records earning high praise, oodles of accolades and bazillions of dollars. She was one of the most famous and successful singers of all time. However, back in the mid 2000s her life at the top was making a mad dash down the terlit. Thanks to an intervention by her fed up momma Cissy Houston, but Ms. Houston finally quit Bobby Brown in 2006, moved to the west coast, got herself some new chomper–or at least they looking like new ones, and started singing again, releasing an album in October 2007 that has produced at least two hit singles. And good for her. We don't care for Ms. Houston's brand of power pop-gospel ballads but we do appreciate her rising Phoenix-like out of Bobby Brown's sad ashes. Speaking of Bobby Brown, well that little lamb floating is around looking all kinds of broke down and road hard, making a child with one baby momma and getting hauled into court for not paying support to another baby momma. We don't know nuthin' from a burlap bag but Your Mama imagines poor Bobby Brown is probably shopping around some tawdry reality tee-vee program and wishing he was still aboard his the Mrs. Money Train.
Anyhoo, we're not here to discuss Ms. Houston's private life and heaven knows it is not our prerogative to discuss Bobby Brown so let's get on to the matter at hand. Property records indicate Ms. Houston snatched up her circular-themed mansion in Mendham Township during the height of her fame in July of 1987. Records show the North Gate Road estate sprawls across 5.1 gated acres and includes a meandering, multi-winged modern mansion the measures a hefty 12,561 square feet. There's no question that twelve and some thousand square feet is huge, but it would feel like a picayne cabin in the woods iffin Your Mama had to live in that house with Bobby Brown and his thinks-he's-so-charming and over-sized ego.
Listing information reveals Ms. Houston's home contains 5 bedrooms with 4 full and 2 half poopers including a round master bedroom painted a hair raising shade of peach that makes Your Mama want to run bamboo shoots into our eyeballs. The massive master bedroom has a curving wall of floor to ceiling glass that looks out on to the back yard, another wall of frosted, curving glass that acts as an interior wall, wall to wall carpeting and a built in bed sitting atop a circular platform. To quote Ms. Houston herself, Your Mama says, "Hell to the no" on the dreadful architecture and day-core of her boo-dwar. Just to clarify, the master bathroom in this New Jersey mansion is not the crack den bathroom which her sister in law Tina Brown so kindly sold photos of to the tabloids. That was, allegedly, her bathroom down in suburban Atlanta.
A wide walkway though the neglected landscaping in the front yard leads to the front door which opens to a long, gently curving entrance hall with a peach colored tile floor that is separated from the circular living room by a curving curtain of Frank Lloyd Wright-ish stained glass. The "formal" living room has 4 or more puffy white sofas lined up along a soaring wall of curving glass with sheer drapery, a monolithic stone fireplace, a sunken bar with swiveling barrel "bar stools," a massive dome-like sky light and wall to wall carpeting that Your Mama imagines has as much cocaine trapped in its fibers as is in all of the country of Columbia.
The large dining room also has peach colored tile floors, a curving wall of floor to ceiling glass, and a long, glass dining room table with 10 chairs that went out of style way back in 1987. The kitchen has more peach colored tile floors, a large work island with a circular sky light over head, white cabinetry that looks like cheap Melamine but is probably–we hope–a material of higher quality, and a dark peach tile back splash that gives Your Mama the chills, but not in the good way. The kitchen opens to the family room which has, yes, even more peach colored tile floors, a fireplace, a long curving wall of floor to ceiling windows that have been swagged with an ass-uglee yellow schmatta for which someone probably charged Ms. Houston $40,000 or some other absurd amount that sounded reasonable to a coked out Ms. Houston. The children will notice that the rug in the family room is the same as in the dining room. Perhaps the rug dealer was having some sort of special that day?
As best as Your Mama can tell the grounds include large lawn areas that likely take a lake to keep green, a number of patios and terraces that ring the rear of the house, a swimming pool with adjacent pool house and a tennis court. Oh low-erd children, just try to imagine Ms. Houston swinging a damn racket at a little yellow ball.
Whitney also owns the house next door, at 1 Cross Way, which she picked up in July of 1993 for $573,477. Presumably this house was used for staff, family, guests or perhaps as recording studio. Or maybe it's where Ms. Houston made Bah-BAY live when he got particularly obnoxious. That house was also listed for sale in mid-September with an asking price of $949,900 but appears to be under contract and no longer available. The property, connected to the first only by a meandering pathway, measures 5.07 acres and includes a 3,410 square foot house (as per assessor) with 3 bedrooms, 3 poopers, an indoor lap swimming pool and a full size basketball court in the back yard, and a children's playground for the now teenaged Bobbi Christina.
Property records indicate that Ms. Houston still owns a waterfront condominium in North Bergen, NJ that was purchased in November of 1989 for $955,000. Back in their salad days, Whit and Bah-BAY owned an 8,022 square foot house on Tullamore Place in Alpharetta, GA. Although it was widely reportedly that the Tullamore Place property was seized and sold by the lender after the erstwhile couple failed to keep up with the mortgage, it was, according to records and Mister Big Time, actually sold in a more traditional sale in May of 2007 for $1,190,000.
Ms. Houston is reported to be living down behind the Orange Curtain in a southern California community called Laguna Hills, but honestly chickens, we've not been able to confirm that. Your Mama's powers of celebrity real estate discovery are only so powerful.
P.S. Thanks for all the well wishes in the last couple of days. Just to clarify, it was the Dr. Cooter's mother–Mama Cooter–that went under the knife and not Your Mama. All went well and thanks again. We made sure Mama Cooter saw some of the missives, comments and communiques and she was thrilled.
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