3 min readJoni Mitchell famously sang about longing for California on her hit 1971 album, Blue. Now, part of the famed folk singer’s Golden State legacy is up for grabs: the Malibu beach house that she had custom built in the 1980s just hit the market for $27 million. Nearby, movie star Orlando Bloom is beefing up the campaign to part with his slice of Malibu, shaving nearly $2 million off the original price. Will it be enough to move the property once and for all? Check it out below along with the rest of this week’s must-see listings.
Edward Durell Stone Landmark in New Canaan
The Celanese House in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Late architect Edward Durell Stone designed some of his generation’s most enduring landmarks, among them Radio City Music Hall in New York and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In 1957, Connecticut-based contractor Theodore de Freyne Hobbs and a chemical company called the Celanese Corporation of America enlisted Stone to devise a show house for their products in the leafy suburb of New Canaan, then a hotbed of midcentury design thanks to homes by architects from the so-called “Harvard Five,” including Philip Johnson, Marcel Breuer, and Eliot Noyes. Now, the landmark home he created is on the market for $4 million.
Orlando Bloom’s Malibu Escape
The kitchen in Orlando Bloom’s Malibu home.
Orlando Bloom is serious about moving on from Malibu. The British actor, who split up with fiancée Katy Perry last summer, just shaved $2 million off his longtime Southern California retreat, per Realtor.com. The Deep Cover actor had previously tried selling the Japanese-inspired house for $12 million in March before cutting it to $11.45 million in May. That makes the new discount roughly 13 percent off the initial ask. Bloom is apparently open to renters as well, with Zillow showing the property is available to lease for $35,000 per month.
The Gilmore Girls House
The original Gilmore Girls house.
The house that appeared as Lorelai and Rory Gilmore’s home in the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls is now for sale, marking its first time on the market in 24 years. The 2,840-square-foot property is located in Unionville, a neighborhood within Markham, Ontario. It’s listed for $3.88 million CAD, or $2.7 million USD. The home last sold in 2002. —Julia Cancilla
Joni Mitchell’s Malibu Beach House
The living room in Joni Mitchell’s former Malibu home.
A Canadian-born folk music artist who rose to fame in the 1960s and ’70s with hits like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock,” Joni Mitchell solidified herself as a California icon with her 1971 album Blue. By the mid-1970s, she had settled into a Spanish Colonial home in Bel Air—but the beach apparently beckoned. Mitchell ended up acquiring an oceanfront parcel in the gated Malibu Colony and tapped architect Ron Goldman to build her a home on the land.
Now, the 4,000-square-foot retreat, which was completed in 1982, is on the market for the first time in decades. It has an asking price of just under $27 million.
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s Former Apartment
Kahlo and Rivera lived in apartment 42 in 1940, during a brief but charged stay in San Francisco.
For the first time in decades, a storied Telegraph Hill apartment building tied to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is on the market for $8 million. The 11-unit property at 36–52 Calhoun Terrace was completed in 1938. Originally known as the Hoeffler Building, it steps down the eastern slope of the hill in a Swiss village–style cascade of balconies, decks, and picture windows overlooking the bay. —Julia Cancilla