Jackson Browne Buys Historic House in Los Angeles

BUYER: Jackson Browne
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,660,000
SIZE: 4,075 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A few weeks ago Your Mama received a covert communique from the always entertaining and well connected Lurleen Letsusknow who funneled our scattered and boozy brain to information about the recent purchase of an historic home by the inestimable musician and dedicated environmental activist Jackson Browne. According to Miss Lestusknow–and confirmed with property records and by Lucy Spillerguts–Mister Brown paid $2,600,000 for a stunning and fully restored single story Spanish Colonial Revival residence in the Beverly Grove area of Los Angeles.

Mister Jackson, a bonified artist and musician, made a career singing and writing songs about his inner turmoils and issues of social justice and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. He has long lived in and around southern California. Born in Germany, he actually grew up just north of downtown L.A. in Highland Park, which was little more than a dusty outpost back in his toddler days. The still touring Mister Jackson, who once dated the fabulous and now dead Nico of The Velvet Underground, has long had a thing for pretty women. He married two models and then became famously entangled with fellow eco-activist Daryl Hannah.

Nowadays Mister Jackson makes a home with Dianna Cohen, a ladee artist who does interesting and intricate things with plastic shopping bags, an everyday and typically ignored object that carries and embodies much that is, for better or worse, culturally important in our hyper consumerist society. Cohen's re-purposing of plastic shopping bags brings a laser like attention to certain eco-issues but also forces a re-evaluation and re-imagining of how we see, perceive and utilize objects that are typically tossed aside (and left to fill up garbage dumps from now until the end of time). No doubt the children have not tuned in to Your Mama's little online endeavor for a damn art lesson, particularly about work Your Mama is quite certain many will poo-poo and claim ain't nothing more than–literally, figuratively metaphorically–garbage. So let's get on back to the real estate matter at hand, shall we?

The Spanish Colonial Revival casa was designed and built in 1929 by its original owner and architect Octavius W. Morgan and placed on Los Angeles' Historic Cultural Monument list in 1989. The accomplished but little discussed Mister Morgan was a principle in the celebrated architectural firm Morgan, Walls & Clements, the folks responsible for significant design aspects of several of Los Angeles' most notable moving picture palaces including The Mayan (now a sizzling salsa club), the Wiltern, and the extraordinary El Capitan (now owned by Disney).

According to property records and listing information, Mister Jackson's newly purchased and recently restored digs measures 4,075 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers including a master bedroom with 2 closets plus a dressing room with built in vanity, a vintage pooper with the original yellow and black accented tile work and French doors that open to a private patio that features and outdoor fireplace and is connected to the home's central courtyard, which is pretty much the back yard except it's not in the back.

The front of the house displays some classic details such as a deeply inset front door, casement windows and wrought iron window grill work. The landscaping would appear to be fresh and new, but also appears to be of the variety that requires a significant amount of water to keep looking fresh and new. Your Mama expects the environmentally concerned and eco-friendly Mister Jackson will replace it with something less thirsty and more drought tolerant.

The interior spaces display a sensitive and successful merger between the home's original details and the modern conveniences folks buying a $2,600,000 residence require. The large living room features dark stained oak floors, a vaulted ceiling with deep brown colored exposed beams and trusses, large casement windows that stretch down to the floor and French doors that open the aforementioned central courtyard. A library has shelving recessed into the walls, large casement windows, an original stained glass window with a multi-colored pattern of circles, and an interesting ceiling treatment that we suspect is original to the house.

The kitchen retains a vintage vibe with its rolled linoleum floors, trio of hanging lights over the work island and turqwaze tile work. There is flat-fronted, winter white cabinetry topped by charcoal colored soap stone counter tops and stainless steel appliances including a double fridge/freezer. A large butler's pantry that connects the kitchen to the formal dining room has mahogany counter tops. A petite family room adjacent to the kitchen makes for an intimate spot to curl up with a book, a stack of tabs or spend the evening watching the terrifying and yet mesmerizing spectacle that is RuPaul's Drag Race. (You better start your engines, hunties!)

Anyhoo, the central courtyard–and who among us does not crave, covet and love a central courtyard that ensures the sort of privacy one requires and desires when nood sunbathing?–has a swimming pool and spa encircled by a stone terrace, and a long promenade runs the length of the courtyard and has a second outdoor fireplace. An outdoor living room not located in the central courtyard features a third outdoor fireplace. Another of the homes notable features would be the 7-car garage that means neither Mister Jackson, Miz Cohen nor any of their house guests suffer arcane parking restrictions enforced by the city and all the Missus Kravitz's in the neighborhood.

Records reveal that Mister Jackson, who formerly lived on a triple wide double lot just one block from the beach on posh Palisades Avenue in Santa Monica, still owns his childhood in Highland Park, a 100+ acre spread in the rugged, rustic and stunningly beautiful Hollister Ranch community just outside of Santa Barbara that he bought in the late 1970s, and a rural property in Aptos, CA. If Your Mama is being honest, and we always are, we don't know which of those properties–if any of them–Mister Browne and Miz Cohen currently live but we do know from our research on the internets that wherever it is they live their home is almost completely off the grid, powered by wind and solar energy and has its own water well.

source: Teles Properties / Ernie Carswell