The remarkable Los Angeles estate of basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain is back on the market this spring with a price reduction. The singular property is now tagged at $11.995 million. The Bel-Air estate has been priced as high as $19 million during its extended stay on the market.
The 9,395 sq. ft. house was custom-built in 1973, and as a trophy home of its era it’s a standout; few others that survive decades in this price range are as evocative of the zeitgeist of their respective periods. This one begins with a set of driveway gates decorated with a custom-designed stained glass panel that suggests the do-it-yourself, back-to-the-land artisanal sensibility of the 1960s and early 1970s. The panel is returned to in the home itself, becoming a motif.
Inside the home, severe angularity is a constant; the meeting of human engineering and the natural world is represented by the use of steel, glass, timber and stone. In one of the house’s eight bathrooms, an all-stainless look joins the geometric severity in borrowing from science fiction.
The most noticeable of the five-bedroom home’s exterior architecture features are the flying buttresses. The structural supports help frame the pool area, and combine the pool and house into one design statement.