Pharrell’s Happy place
The Grammy-hoarder’s LA pile is up for sale – and it’s hardly ‘a room without a roof’, says Gary Parkinson
What makes you happy? Van Halen singer David Lee Roth noted that “Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.”
In the case of Pharrell Williams – the 13-time Grammy winner whose chirpily upbeat neo-soul singalong Happy earwormed its way around the world – $15.6 million bought him a Los Angeles mansion in 2018. Now he’s put it back on the market, so maybe it can make you happy... if you have $16.95 million to spare.
With stunning views from almost every room, Pharrell’s fabulous hilltop lair lies high up in the Beverly Hills 90210 ZIP code, off the world-famous Mulholland Drive - the 21-mile highway which snakes through the Santa Monica Mountains, was named after the pioneering civil engineer who brought water to Los Angeles, and was immortalised in David Lynch’s neo-noir film of the same name.
Behind the gates and down the 200-foot-long private driveway is a motor court for 30 or more cars. Quite the spot for a party, Pharrell’s house sits on 4.25 acres, with 17,245 square feet of floor space. Inside there are 10 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, a main room with a snaking marble staircase, a formal dining area with a crystal rock chandelier and plenty of informal areas, including one with the sort of 10-seat quadrant-shaped glass table you might not find on the high street.
But the property is dominated by the outside: floor-to-ceiling window walls accommodate those views over the City of Angels. The grounds include sunken floodlit tennis courts, rock sculptures, koi ponds and two resort-like pools with grotto, slide, swim-up bar and 20ft waterfall. It is, in short, somewhere between a Playboy mansion and a Bond villain’s lair.
It’s also only had three previous owners. Pharrell bought the house from actor/film-maker Tyler Perry, who had purchased it for $14.5m in 2017. Before that it was owned by billionaire philanthropist Alfred Mann, who had it architect-built in 1992 to maximise those views.
Mann died in 2016 and now it’s back on the market again, handled by celebrity realtors Kurt Rappaport and Drew Meyers of WEA Homes. Pharrell’s place only just scrapes onto the second page of their website listings: other properties include a $95m pad in New York’s East Hampton, an $82.5m Foothill Estate in Beverly Hills and a $45m property in Miami Beach.
But don’t worry for Pharrell, his wife Helen Lasichanh and their four children. Should they need a place to stay in LA, they can pop round the corner to one of their other houses - the Skyline Residence, one of the most expensive addresses in Laurel Canyon.
Originally published in the Metro newspaper, 10 Mar 2020
