Brad Pitt Buys $40 Million Cliffside Mansion in Carmel

Table Of Content

• The Wild History Behind Brad Pitt’s New $40 Million Carmel Highlands Home
• Brad Pitt’s home in Carmel, the historic D.L. James house
• KSBW Monterey
• Brad Pitt says he’s been in love with new…
• More in Real Estate
• The actor and architecture aficionado has invested in a picturesque property located in the Carmel Highlands.

The Wall Street Journal reported (paywall) that Brad Pitt paid a whopping $40 million for the century-old home on a bluff in the Carmel Highlands along California’s central coast. Brad Pitt splashed out on a historic $40 million bachelor pad located on the cliffs of Carmel, California. Carmel-by-the-Sea—which is roughly 100 miles south of San Francisco—has long attracted Hollywoods stars.

The Wild History Behind Brad Pitt’s New $40 Million Carmel Highlands Home

Nearly every window in the house offers incredible views of the coastline and ever-changing sea and, to the north, unobstructed views of majestic Point Lobos. James House, named after the American writer who commissioned its design in 1918. The house was designed by Charles Sumner Greene of the influential 20th-century architecture firm, Greene and Greene. The home is located atop a steep bluff on the oceanside of Highway 1 and was constructed out of locally-quarried sandstone and granite. It also has a tiled Mediterranean-style roof, arched windows and ocean views. The historic, Craftsman-style home was designed by architect Charles Sumner Greene—who pioneered the California bungalow style with his brother Henry Mather Greene—for author D.L.

Brad Pitt’s home in Carmel, the historic D.L. James house

The Iconic Butterfly House in Carmel-by-the-Sea Just Sold for $29 Million - Architectural Digest

The Iconic Butterfly House in Carmel-by-the-Sea Just Sold for $29 Million.

Posted: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The abode is particularly notable for its use of locally sourced granite and limestone, which gives its facade a sense of timelessness, as though it’s just as fundamental a part of its environment as the rocky cliff it sits on. No matter how you slice it, it would appear that Carmel may have many more days in the sun after all. The cliffside property was previously owned since 1999 by an LLC linked to Chicago Research and Trading founder Joe Ritchie, who died earlier this year. The sale reportedly marks one of the most expensive real estate deals ever made in the Carmel area, where the former beachside home of Golden Girls star Betty White sold last April for ​​$10.775 million, at $2.825 million over the asking price. A departure from the typical mahogany and teak wooden compositions designed by Greene and Greene, the D.L. James House, also known as the “Seaward,” was built with locally sourced sandstone and granite.

KSBW Monterey

While not next-door neighbors, Pitt’s new home is in the same area as the one used to film the home scenes of Nicole Kidman’s Big Little Lies character, Celeste. (The same home was also used in the filming of Basic Instinct.) According to Google Maps, the properties are just a two-minute car ride away from each other. In fact, the BLL home is actually currently for sale as well—for a cool $29.6 million. We reckon he’s enjoying this phase of life as he’s said in one of his famous quotes “Personally I like aging.

Brad Pitt’s headline-making purchase has drawn attention to exactly what made Carmel so interesting in the first place—its gorgeous architecture. For such a small place, it is chockfull of architecturally interesting properties, including a seaside Frank Lloyd Wright home and work from prominent figures of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Greene and Greene. James House and Seaward, is a historic structure designed by Greene and Greene themselves in 1918.

Brad Pitt says he’s been in love with new…

In January, Pitt put his Los Feliz compound with its 6,692-square-foot, Craftsman-style main house on the market, even though the property had special meaning for him. Getty’s property should allow the movie star to have a more modest home base in Los Angeles while he reportedly makes his $39 million clifftop estate in Carmel Highlands his main residence. The property encompasses 2.51 acres of rugged land with multiple structures.

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According to The Gamble House, which preserves the history of the architectural firm Greene & Greene, "the house’s composition, arched windows, and tiled roof reflect a Mediterranean influence." The sale marks the latest celebrity home in and around Carmel, where former mayor Clint Eastwood lived in Mission Ranch. More recently, the former home of the late Betty White sold for nearly $5 million over its $7.95 million asking price. According to The Wall Street Journal, Pitt splashed out $40 million for a historic home in the quiet cliffs of the unincorporated Carmel Highlands area (think Big Little Lies). While Pitt still owns a 50 percent stake in the French chateau Miraval, and is still believed to own his longtime home in the Los Angeles area, the new purchase adds a seaside retreat to Pitt’s property portfolio.

Doris Day was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the ’50s and ’60s, but when she chose to leave behind life on the silver screen in favor of animal rights activism, she chose Carmel as her home base. Before Pitt, the house was owned since 1999 by an LLC linked to Chicago Research and Trading founder Joe Ritchie, who died earlier this year, according to Architectural Digest. It reflects a second 695-square-foot structure built in 1940 consisting of one bedroom and one bathroom. Other attributes on the county document list a total of five fireplaces, a 550-square-foot greenhouse, a 504-square-foot garage, and a 588-square-foot basement. A Monterey County property characteristics record describes a parcel of 2.51 acres that consists of land with two dwellings, the largest being a 3,793-square-foot structure of three bedrooms and four bathrooms constructed in 1914. His main residence though is his multi-house compound in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A., which he's owned since the mid-1990s.

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The property was sold off-market to Pitt by Searock, a limited liability company tied to the Ritchies. In 2008, the actor paid $60 million for the 1,200-acre French estate Château Miraval, intending to raise his children with ex-wife Angelina at the winery. His surviving spouse sold the native stone house in 1999 to the late Chicago financier Joe Ritchie, who paid $4.5 million for it, according to Dirt. James Seaward house last year, the 'Bullet Train' actor is ready to move into his Carmel Highlands castle. The D.L. James House is just the latest get in Brad's impressive real estate portfolio.

Charles Greene moved to Carmel around the time he was commissioned to design Seaward where he lived until his death in 1957. The elaborate stonework is featured throughout the property, and it has an intricate layout of rooms with arched windows and a tiled Mediterranean-style roof. The Gamble House also states that as part of the design, Charles "built up the outer walls so that they appear to be growing out of the cliffs". He also designed the property so it would not interfere with nature on the plot of land, with trees and shrubs growing around the home since it was first built.

There’s also a caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate, which was built in 1940 and offers an additional bedroom and one bathroom. Pitt expanded the estate during his two-decade stay, buying four surrounding properties from 1998 to 2009. “Brad has decided that he wants to live a peaceful life going forward and is deciding what ‘semi-retirement’ looks like for him,” a source told Page Six in December. Pitt’s decision to downsize comes as all his children are getting older and his contentious divorce from Jolie reportedly strained his relationships with some of them. The possibility that Pitt could relocate to Carmel has some merit, given the report that he was stepping back from Hollywood after selling a majority stake in his storied Hollywood production company, Plan B. She explains that the Monterey Peninsula features different “micro markets” with personalities and qualities of their own and each market attracts different types of clients and buyers.

The pair are known for developing their large and stately “Ultimate Bungalows,” which they designed and built mainly in Pasadena. Greene moved his family north to live in the artist colony of Carmel in 1916 and took on the commission of The D.L. James House two years later. Quarried from local stone, the project took approximately five years to complete. The home sits perilously close to a steep and rocky clifftop just meters from the beach and boasts a "wooden aesthetic". It was built from granite and sandstone quarried from the cliffs.