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Thursday 25 July 2019

The Manor that Aaron Spelling Built Just Sold for a Record-Breaking $120M

The_Spelling_Manor_Holmby_Hills,_Los_Angeles
The opulent mansion owned until recently by F1 heiress Petra Ecclestone finally found a buyer. And despite its final selling price falling short of the ambitious initial asking of $200 million, that doesn’t make it any less staggering.
An unnamed buyer reportedly paid $119.75 million for the well-known Los Angeles property dubbed the Manor. That’s the highest home price in Los Angeles County history and only the fourth sale to surpass the $100 million mark in L.A. history, the LA Times reports. The national record is held by a New York penthouse towering over Central Park that sold in January for a record $238 million.
Now, what’s the story of the 56,500-square-foot chateau in Holmby Hills that has the power to command a $120 million sale? For those of us that didn’t grow up in L.A. in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the massive estate may not bring back memories. But for the people of Los Angeles, The Manor has been a topic of discussion for years.

The story of Aaron Spelling’s ostentatious manor

When I was a little kid, I remember thinking that Aaron Spelling was sort of TV royalty. The man had his name on pretty much everything I would watch on TV, his name leading credits for everything from the Love Boat to Dynasty, Sunset Beach, and Beverly Hills 90210, amassing an incredible fortune in the process.
aaron spelling with 90210 cast
Image credit: Globe Photos
When news first broke about a Dinasty-worthy mansion he was building for himself, nothing felt off place. In the spirit of the shows that made him his vast fortune, it even figured that he donned his own name to the palatial abode he built on what is arguably L.A.’s most prestigious street. A colossal structure spanning 56,500 square feet of living space, the Spelling Manor took shape as one of the most massive and outrageously lavish properties in the country.
But building the most ostentatious manors in the country doesn’t necessarily get you the type of recognition Spelling was likely going after. Since the moment Spelling started building his estate, the project spawned a great deal of controversy over its massive size and ostentatious architecture. In April 1988, the Los Angeles Times asked:
What’s bigger than a football field, smaller than Hearst Castle, has a bowling alley and an entire floor of closets, and is making some people very annoyed?
Aaron and Candy Spelling’s 56,500-square-foot (5,250 m2) mansion in Holmby Hills. The French chateau, under construction now for two years, has turned the corner of Mapleton and Club View drives into a gawker’s paradise. Sprawled across 6 acres (2.4 ha) on what once was the Bing Crosby estate, the house dwarfs the sizable mansions on the block and looms large over tranquil Holmby Park near Wilshire Boulevard.
After the manor took its current shape, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Sam Hall Kaplan panned the structure as one of the region’s worst projects built in the course of the ’80s:
Aaron Spelling residence, which at 56,500 square feet (5,250 m2), should be considered a congregate living facility and not a single-family home, and therefore in violation of Holmby Hills zoning. What Spelling’s folly is, of course, is a sad commentary on the distorted values that have taken the architectural form of monster mansions at a time when tens of thousands of persons are homeless.
But the outrage didn’t stop here. In fact, Aaron and Candy Spelling’s manor quickly seeped into popular culture, with a never-ending stream of references and jokes being made at the expense of the Spellings. In fact, performer John Perry composed a calypso/rap novelty song about the house called “The Ballad of Aaron and Candy (An Ode to Spelling’s Dwelling)” that ran like this:
See Candy’s jewels, see Aaron’s money,
Aaron doesn’t think being picked on is funny.
See Candy’s clothes, see Aaron’s pad
See Aaron and Candy’s castle make the neighbors mad.
But they’re livin’ in splendor high above the crowds
60,000 square feet of heaven.
That’s Spelling’s dwelling, I said
Spelling’s Dwelling…
Candy Spelling at the Manor. Credit: Official Facebook page
Aaron and Candy Spelling brushed off the ridicule and lived many years in the massive estate.
Aaron Spelling died in the mansion on June 23, 2006, at age 83. Three years later, the property was listed for sale at an asking price of $150 million, making it the most expensive listing in America at the time.

Under F1 heiress ownership: The Manor

Petra Ecclestone, owner of The Manor. Photographer: Photographer: Roe Ethridge for W Magazine
It wasn’t until summer 2011 that a new owner emerged for the eccentric estate. Petra Ecclestone, daughter of F1 racing baron Bernie Ecclestone, paid an astounding $85 million in cash to buy the property from Candy Spelling.
She then hired designer Gavin Brodin to update the rather matronly interiors in a massive renovation project that was to be completed in less than three months. The project was so grand some outlets report that there were up to 500 workers on the property at a time, and that the total costs amounted to more than $20 million. The European-influenced contemporary result got a wide spread in a W Magazine article titled “Lady of the Manor”.
Ecclestone later tried to sell the property for a major profit off-market for $150 million, only to list it in 2016 for a whopping $200 million. And while there have been rumors that even Jay-Z and Beyonce visited the property at one point, no buyer had emerged in sight until news of the record sale broke out.

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