Toward the end of last month, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi sold the notable modern-style home in Beverly Hills they picked up late last summer. The couple paid $8.5 million for the early 1960s midcentury, which was designed by Robert Skinner and has become known as the Rowan House. They quietly accepted an offer of $8.757 million for the place, according to Dirt.
The 3,477 sq. ft. home, which sits on a .42-acre lot, was painstakingly and sensitively restored prior to the pair’s purchase of it last year, and it doesn’t appear that changes were undertaken during their short ownership tenure. As it stands, it features redwood tongue-and-groove accents inside and out, terrazzo floors, Douglas fir cabinetry, and new fixtures and lighting that nicely straddle the home’s build era and contemporary tastes.
Built-in bookshelves, skylights, a wood-burning fireplace, and walls of glass are additional details at work in this pitch-perfect vision of vibrant early 1960s optimism. The lot is given a landscaping treatment that favors the lush and suggests the slightly overgrown, contrasting nicely with the strident modern lines and boxy single-floor form. Most appealing is the single mature tree that presides over the little garden courtyard integrated into the home’s architecture. A pool, various plantings and gardens set the living style as timeless and incredibly invitational.
Further reading on the subject of DeGeneres/de Rossi residential adventures will frequently take the curious into Montecito: the duo sold a property in the Santa Barbara County jewel in April for $13.5 million, acquired a peculiarly arresting postmodern Moorish-inspired estate in March for $21 million, and handed off Dennis Miller’s old estate in the community to a new owner last October for $55 million.