It was the first of three Los Angeles estates the movie mogul built—the biggest of which is owned by Taylor Swift, who restored it and won landmark status
4 min
Taylor Swift took on the role of preservationist when she bought and restored a Beverly Hills mansion built for movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn—and if she’s looking for a new project, another century-old Goldwyn estate just hit the market asking $3.495 million.
The 1916 Spanish-style villa was built for the Polish-born producer in the Hollywood foothills of Runyon Canyon, a little-known artist enclave with a rich legacy. It was a starter home for Goldwyn, who eventually bought two other properties in Los Angeles as part of the so-called Goldwyn trifecta, according to listing agent Ingrid Sacerio of the Agency, who listed the home last week.
The two other homes include an Italianate mansion built a couple blocks away by Los Angeles developer E.F. Fuller (it sold in 2022 for $6.4 million), and the grand Georgian Revival mansion in Beverly Hills that Swift bought in 2016 for $25 million before launching a campaign to have it officially landmarked . She still owns the home.
Should Swift (or anyone else) wish to flex their conservation muscles, the Hollywood property already boasts original architectural details, including the windows, interior doors and oak floors throughout. A triptych sculpture from the 1928 “Cleopatra” movie set and other artefacts and fountains dot the landscaped grounds.
Sacerio said it also has a lucky legacy: Soon after moving in, Goldwyn co-founded MGM and began producing acclaimed films of the 1930s and ’40s, including “Stella Dallas,” “Wuthering Heights,” and “Little Foxes,” and hit musicals such as “Guys and Dolls,” starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, and “Porgy and Bess.”
The neighbourhood “was a magnet for silent movie stars back in the day,” said seller Shel Pink, who is an artist, author of the self-care book “Slow Beauty” and the founder of beauty-product brand SpaRitual. She purchased the house in 2015 with musician Ran Pink. “One of the houses across the street was reputedly owned by one who had parties that lasted for days.”
Pink said the history of the neighbourhood was a significant draw. “Everyone knows about the music scene in Laurel Canyon but not about this little enclave in Runyon Canyon, which has attracted writers like Joan Didion, who rented here in the 1970s, and other creative types over the decades.”
She was also drawn to the house’s Old Hollywood history and its location on the hill. “We are slightly above but not so high that we have to drive down steep, winding roads, so it’s super accessible,” Pink said.
The 3,398-square-foot residence sits on a corner lot and features four bedrooms and three bathrooms. A separate studio with its own entrance is adjacent to the two-car garage at the rear of the property.
Upstairs, the primary bedroom now incorporates what was once a neighbouring sunroom with a vaulted ceiling and semi-circle, or half-sun, windows; a previous owner added a ceiling-mounted curtain that Pink says can be drawn to block out the morning sun or to keep the sleeping area cool during the day. Two more bedrooms (one en-suite) are on this level.
The fourth bedroom with a walk-in closet on the ground floor is currently used as a den. A designated office overlooks the dining room, which flows into a living room on one side and the kitchen on the other—all enclosed with expansive windows and glass doors, allowing light to flood the interior, Pink said.
A tall fence surrounds the entire property, which is further protected with double gates—a two-door pedestrian gate along the street and another leading into the porch outside the front door, both customised by the previous owner, Pink said.
The garage’s location at the rear of the property provides additional privacy. “No one ever sees anyone coming and going out of the front gate,” Sacerio said. Instead, they pull into the garage, walk across a pebbled area, up a few steps to a patio with a hot tub, and into the breakfast nook in the kitchen.
A landscaped brick pathway circumnavigates the perimeter of the property, crossing a patio with an outdoor fireplace and ending in steps leading down to a long, narrow pool.
“From the moment you enter the gardens and see the ivy walls, there’s a poetry and a wildness here—I like to say that we have our own mini forest that hugs the home and creates a serene oasis in the middle of an urban environment,” Pink said. “It feels like a secluded retreat. Everyone comments on the beautiful energy and sense of calm as soon as they step inside.”
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Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.
2 min
A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.
The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.
“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”
The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.
It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.
In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.
“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.
The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.
“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.
He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.
The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.
“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.
His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.
“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.
When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.
They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.
The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.
For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.
“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”
As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.
“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”
Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.
