YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week before we winged our way east we received a covert communique from regular tipster Tommy Talksalot who informed us that former professional dancer and model turned Emmy-nominated actress Victoria Rowell has put her Los Angeles residence on the market with an asking price of $2,599,000.
A quick perusal of Miz Rowell’s resumé on the Internet Movie Data Base shows her big break cam in the late 1980s with two-episode arc on The Cosby Show, a turn of entertainment industry good fortune that launched into her showbiz salad days, the 1990s and early Aughts when she simultaneously appeared on the soap story Young and the Restless (1990-2007) and the medical crime dram Diagnosis Murder (1993-2002).
Along the way she appeared in a number of other tee-vee shows (Noah’s Arc) and mostly bad movies (The Distinguished Gentleman) and pushed out a couple of children, one of them with jazz genius Wynton Marsalis. Since her time at Y&R came to an end in 2007–there are unconfirmed rumors she may reprise her role this year–she’s written a couple of books: a memoir about her experiences in the foster care system (The Women Who Raised Me) and a possibly thinly veiled novel (Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva) about a black actress who appears on the soap story The Rich and the Ruthless.
Anyhoo, property records show Miz Rowell acquired her Los Angeles home way back in the first days of 1997 when she paid $825,000 for the 1923 red tile-roofed Mediterranean perched on a sloping .29 acre city view lot in the quintessentially Los Angeles ‘hood that cleaves to the steep slopes around Beachwood Canyon.
Listing information shows the two-story house measures 4,354 square feet with a total of 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms that include, as per listing information, a celebrity-style master suite comprised of window-wrapped bedroom with city views, “dramatic” bathroom, “spacious” walk-in closet with custom built-ins and a separate private sitting room, which may or may not be that rather useless-looking room furnished with a circular hotel lobby sofa and crystal chandelier.
The main living and entertaining spaces have dark, espresso-colored hardwood floors include a long living room lined on two opposite walls with French doors, a over-sized formal dining room with various access points to the outdoors, and a kitchen fitted with long and narrow center island, antique white raised panel cabinetry, brown and beige flecked granite counter tops, and all the to-be-expected from a multi-million dollar house high-grade, commercial style stainless steel appliances. Additional interiors spaces mentioned but not but now shown in online listing information include a den, library, family room, media/music room, and a breakfast room adjacent to the kitchen.
Various city and canyon view terraces, balconies and what listing information calls “Italian gardens” extend the indoor living spaces to the outdoors and include a swimming pool tightly tucked into a courtyard ringed by vine-draped walls and tree-shaded lawns below the house look pretty and serene but due to their steep slope are relatively impractical for anything but viewing and lop-sided strolling.
An incomplete and entirely unscientific spin through property records suggest (but does not prove) that Miz Rowell does not currently own any other property in Los Angeles, or anywhere else for that matter. Howevuh, given that she married Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey a couple of years ago it’s not such a stretch they might own a home in or around Atlanta.