Party like it’s 1699 or so in this North Blvd. mansion in Edgemont, where an updated 1925 estate includes a full-blown concert hall, super-formal formal rooms, and a platoon of figures serving a variety of decorative and occasionally structural purposes. The palatial, seemingly performance-ready venue and its collection of antique architectural embellishments sits on the northwest corner of North and Mandell St.
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Winsome, stoned — or maybe just plastered — maidens toting cherubs (below) indicate the property’s garden entry off the Mandell sidewalk. The re-imagineered Old World home sits on the westbound side of a famous live-oak lined block with a median separating the one-way traffic flows.
Many of the listing photos appear to be versions of magazine spreads featuring the overhauled 7,985-sq.-ft. home. It’s located just shy of the Broadacres Historic District and a couple-three blocks south of the Mandell bridge over the Southwest Fwy. HCAD records a 1969 addition to the home, an update in 1975, and a 2005 remodeling with expansion. But the living and dining rooms (below) retain their original flanking-the-foyer placement.
Frescoes and other painted surfaces blur the real and the faux in much of the Europhilic interior:
Cherubs et al float above the “morning room” (above), which has a view into a walled garden with caryatid sentries at the portico (at right). Inside, some of the statuary handles the heavy lifting of a hieroglyphic ceiling in what the listing cites as “The Florentine Room” (below):
A few more heavenly hosts keep a playful watch o’er the spa upstairs:
Above the chamber music chamber, a gilded grouping hovers:
Even figure-free, the kitchen ceiling still carries a bit of color. Below it are plenty of prep space and cook-for-a-crowd appliances:
The 4-or-5 bedroom home includes 2 master bedrooms, including the one pictured below with a fireplace and built-ins. Other bedrooms as well as the 6 full- and 3 half-baths didn’t make it into the listing:
Upstairs, there’s a loggia with “summer kitchen” overlooking an arcade-ringed piazza . . .
Swag-swathed, a home gym (above) with stained-glass windows is just off the even-more-ornate spa.
As in the opening of an Esther Williams film, forms divine populate the pool area:
Come July, the much-modified mega-Mediterranean property will mark a milestone year on the market. Its asking price since April has been $4.9 million, down from an earlier $5,785,000.
- 1604 North Blvd. [HAR]
When did Tony Montana move to North Blvd???
“Say hello to my little friend.”
“Money, money, money ….” –Sally Bowles.
To be fair, Tony Montana’s style is Florida Contemporary, the complete opposite of what this is. I’d give them 2.5 mil today and cover all the murals with white paint so I can sleep at night.
Caligula lives.
I’m normally turned off by this sort of thing, but I’m oddly cool with this. Maybe it’s just so over-the-top, it hurdles beyond gauche to simply being ridiculous. I’m cool with ridiculous. One last observation: the interiors of so many high-end homes shown on this site are utterly awash in beige, I was beginning to think there was some kind of color allergy common to rich people. At least this house doesn’t suffer from that.
I see they have a ROM. The $15,000 exercise machine advertised in the Quack section of the Skymall magazine.
“Oh my, was it today that pictures were being taken? I was just cutting flowers in the kitchen.”
I don’t care about the inside, because you can always change that easily, but these people RUINED the exterorior of the original house. In 2002, this was my favorite house in Houston. Then straight Liberace bought it and turned the outside into an absolute atrocity and the inside into Caligula’s den for his “singer” wife.
Wait, Liberace had a Houston home?
@Joe. Dang. I thought I was going to be the first person to spot the ROM. Hopefully they’ll have an open house so i can try it out?
“And we just love the sarcophagus replica in the spa. The decorator told us it would remind us of life’s transitory nature — while doubling as a hot tub!”
I wonder if the owners (present or past) ever took acid in this place? OOOOPS…Prank call…prank call!!
Barf!!!
I painted part of the muses in the spa, and did the acid finishing in the laundry room. The ‘contractor’ didn’t pay me for the work and took the credit.