Architectural Metal
Wrought iron gates for Ryan Seacrest’s mansion
Moving in with Julianne? Ryan Seacrest lowers the asking price of his Hollywood Hills estate to $11.9 million
By CASSIE CARPENTER
He just signed a two-year contract with NBC and renewed his American Idol contract for another two years as host, and now Ryan Seacrest is ready to upgrade to a new home.
The hardest working man in Hollywood has just lowered the price of his Hollywood Hills estate, which he affectionately dubbed ‘Casa di Pace’ (House of Peace), from $14.9 million last year to $11.9 million.
Perhaps the 37-year-old is now eager to move in with his beautiful girlfriend of two years, Dancing with the Stars star Julianne Hough.
Ryan Seacrest has just lowered the price of his Hollywood Hills estate from $14.9 million last year to $11.9 million. ‘I looked for the right property for years,’ Seacrest told Architecture Digest in 2008.
‘It was really tricky to find something that had the convenience factor—I wanted to be at work in 10 minutes—and at the same time the escape factor. In my head I was seeing the sort of villa you might see in Spain or Italy. The day I saw the house was the day I made an offer.’
Host with the most: After signing two contracts, Ryan is ready to upgrade to a new home
Located atop of Nichols Canyon behind wrought iron gates, the stately 10,000-square-foot Mediterranean, built in 1974, sits behind wrought-iron gates on nearly an acre of hilltop with canyon and city views.
Known as one of the crown jewels of the Hollywood Hills, the six-bedroom mansion sits on an acre and boasts 6.5 bathrooms, a screening room, a living room with 17-foot beamed ceilings, peaceful gardens, detached garage, pool, spa, championship tennis court, library, billiards room, bar, and a wine cellar.
Ryan originally bought the property from two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker and actor Kevin Costner in 2006 for a little less than his selling price at $11.5 million.
Costner bought the house from Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss in 1995 for $2.7 million.
Celebrity real estate: Seacrest purchased the six-bedroom mansion from Oscar winner Kevin Costner, who originally bought it from Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss
Crown jewel of the Hollywood Hills: The mansion boasts 6.5 bathrooms, a screening room, a living room with 17-foot beamed ceilings, peaceful gardens, detached garage, pool, spa, championship tennis court, library, billiards room, bar, and a wine cellar
The show host (and Keeping Up With The Kardashians producer) wanted the house to have a ‘feeling of timelessness and peace,’ so he hired famed interior designer Jeff Andrews to remodel it.
‘Ryan wanted the house to be warm and inviting, but he also wanted a certain sense of drama,’ Andrews told Architecture Digest.
‘We decided to play up some of the ethnic accents throughout the house and bring in a little more Old Hollywood glamour. He’s a big traveler, and we wanted the place to almost feel like it could be a resort anywhere in the world.’
Home sweet home: The show host wanted the house to have a ‘feeling of timelessness and peace,’ so he hired famed interior designer Jeff Andrews to remodel it
Seacrest’s favorite rooms are the Indonesian-flavored master bath and the state-of-the-art gym with hotel-style TV monitors attached to the treadmills
Among the renovations was transforming the guesthouse into a funky club room, inspired by the Hôtel Costes in Paris, and the downstairs rec room became a 4,500-bottle wine cellar and tasting room.
Seacrest’s favorite rooms are the Indonesian-flavored master bath and the state-of-the-art gym with hotel-style TV monitors attached to the treadmills.
Seacrest, who pulled in $51 million last year and is ranked 44 on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list, renewed his contract with American Idol last week, signing on for another two years as host for $30 million. The dollar amount on his NBCUniversal contract was not reported.
from dailymail.co.uk
Meg Ryan’s mansion with wrought iron details for sale
Meg Ryan’s Home is Back on Bel-Air Market for the Third Time
Could third time be a charm? Hopefully it is for Meg Ryan, who just relisted her home on the Bel-Air real estate market for $11.4 million.
According to the property’s price history, this is the third time Ryan has listed the home since she bought it in 2000. Perhaps the news of home values rising and a housing bottom in sight makes her optimistic the time is right to find a buyer.
Best known for her roles in rom-coms like “When Harry Met Sally,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “ You’ve Got Mail,” Ryan purchased the home for $8.5 million. She first listed the home for sale in October 2008 for $19.5 million, but took it down in February, only to relist it again in October 2009 for a decreased price of $14.2 million.
With no takers, the blonde actress decided to go the landlord route, offering up the classic Spanish-style home as a $40,000-per-month rental. Rumor has it that Diane Keaton rented the home, but has moved on, leading Ryan to try her luck at selling again.
Located in the hills of Bel-Air surrounded by other gracious and private estates, Ryan’s home is described as a “museum quality” restoration with stenciled and painted wood ceilings and tiles as well as wrought-iron work details and archways. Like the other homes in the neighborhood, the estate is extremely private, set back from the road behind walls and thick hedges. The home sits on just under three quarters of an acre and includes a pool, guest house and several outdoor living spaces.
The 6-bedroom, 7-bath home has 6,877-square-feet of living space, two family rooms, a film-screening room, separate bar off the kitchen and enormous master suite.
from forbes.com
Portsmouth “wrought iron” Victorian fort
Naval gazing
A Victorian fort on the high seas has been reopened as Britain’s most unusual luxury hotel
By Tom Robbins
Look to sea from Portsmouth harbour and your eye is inevitably drawn to the three strange stone blocks on the horizon. While the waves rise and fall, the yachts heel and powerboats race, these granite bastions sit solid and immovable, immune to the changing of tides or passing of centuries.
Even if you take a boat out to get a closer look, their blank, circular walls of stone and wrought iron give little hint of their purpose or what they contain. You might guess that they are oil rigs before deciding they are clearly too old, or perhaps Victorian lighthouses, were they not much too burly.
The one function you would never imagine for such forbidding structures is hospitality but last week Spitbank Fort, the closest to shore of the three, opened its doors as Britain’s most unusual luxury hotel. I was to be its first guest; after a 15-minute crossing, my boat pulled up at the landing stage and I climbed the metal steps to its imposing entrance.
Spitbank was built at vast expense between 1867 and 1878, alongside its two neighbours, No Man’s Land Fort and Horse Sand Fort, to guard the entrance to Portsmouth harbour, home of the Royal Navy since the reign of Henry VIII. In the event, the feared attack from the French did not materialise and the forts never fired their cannon in anger, becoming known as “Palmerston’s follies” after the prime minister who had ordered their construction.
Spitbank was finally sold off by the Ministry of Defence in 1982 and, after spells as an occasional restaurant and party venue, it was bought in October 2009, sight unseen, by Mike Clare, a genial British entrepreneur best known as the founder of bed retailer Dreams (a business he later sold for a reported £230m). Clare showed me round his purchase in July 2010 and, as we toured its waterlogged basement and crumbling concrete gun emplacements, he set out his ambitious plans for turning it into a unique hotel. The potential was clear but so was the scale of the 
job, and the opening date he proposed, Easter 2011, seemed optimistic.
It was. Launch dates came and went; my visit to see the new hotel was postponed three times (including one last-minute cancellation because of an unpleasant-sounding emergency with the sewage treatment plant). When I asked Mark Watts, the general manager, to identify the key factors in the delays, he said simply: “Being in the middle of the sea.”
The cost of the works rose to £2m, on top of the £1m purchase price, or a total of £375,000 for each of the eight double rooms. So when Watts pushed open the heavy wooden door and ushered me inside, I was expecting a grand transformation.
to be continued
from ft.com
Wrought iron fence for Fort Allen Park
Fort Allen Park rehab moves forward
Plan for park includes wrought-iron fence and concrete walkways
Fort Allen Park in Portland is on its way to being restored to its former glory. A plan to improve the park was approved unanimously at a meeting Wednesday night.
The group Friends of the Eastern Promenade is sponsoring the rehabilitation effort. The group wants to restore the park to the way it looked in it’s heyday between 1890 and 1930.
The plan includes a wrought-iron fence, more concrete walkways, clearing some trees near the waterfront and planting trees near the Portland House Condominium Complex.
from wmtw.com
Quebec City and wrought iron
Garden Paths
By Rebecca Lo
‘You’ll have to speak French in Quebec!” I was warned time and again about the lack of English in the provincial capital of Quebec. But despite my virtually non-existent high school French, I was unflappable. Quebec City has long been regarded as a slice of Europe in North America. While cruising along Boulevard Champlain as follows the sweeping St. Lawrence River, it is easy to see why.
Rugged Canadian Shield cliffs and brightly colored clapboard houses fly past us as we attempt to find our bed and breakfast, Hayden’s Wexford House along Rue Champlain.
A tousled gray-haired man in his 50s, dressed casually in worn jeans and a T-shirt, greets us with a hearty handshake as he opens the door.
“Salut,” says Jacques Brouard, proprietor of the 1832 gray stone house with a pretty garden to the side.
We are shown upstairs to our St. Lawrence River-facing room, one of four in the home. Though small, its sloping ceilings and vintage wallpaper made us immediately feel like we were settled in a quaint cottage.
Any Canadian primary school student can easily rattle off why Quebec City is so important to the country’s history.
The cradle of French Lower Canada, it is the only city north of Mexico that has retained its original fortified walls.
The citadel that encompasses the historic center of old Quebec was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.
And it was on the Plains of Abraham, today a rolling park enjoyed by picnicking day trippers, where British soldiers defeated the French in 1759, allowing them to eventually take the rest of Canada.
However, Quebec City has famously kept much of the windy paths, stone buildings and old-world charm that makes its historic center the most European-looking town in North America.
To stretch our legs, we walk to nearby Quartier Petit Champlain. North America’s oldest continuously operating commercial area, the fur trading posts dating back to 1608 have yielded to artisan boutiques, bistros with alfresco terraces and street artists who strut their creative stuff during warmer months.
Its red brick buildings, cobblestone streets and wrought-iron balconies are so European that if it weren’t for the ubiquitous Tim Horton’s coffee shop, we would have been fooled.
After a brief wait, we are escorted outside to a glass topped wrought iron table beside a patch of orange tulips and daisies at Le Lapin Saute. We dive into fresh pasta and sandwiches, regretfully declining the restaurant’s namesake dish of rabbit.
Refreshed and ready for adventure, we head to nearby L’ile d’Orleans, about a dozen kilometers east of the city’s limits.
A teardrop-shaped island that serves as a bedroom community for Quebec City, it is a haven for craftsmen and one-of-a-kind businesses that prefer a slower pace of life in a beautiful setting.
We stop at Vignoble Saint-Petronille on L’ile d’Orleans, a family-run boutique winery where grapes for whites, reds, ice and champagne-style wine are harvested from vineyards next to the winery.
Its grounds offer a splendid view of Chute Montmorency, a mighty waterfall nestled in green pines.
At the cellar door offering complimentary tastings, we were introduced to mistrelle, a blend of brandy, sugar and grape juice that tastes like ice wine with a kick. There are also picnic tables for wine fans that must try out their new purchases immediately.
After all that driving around in pastoral splendor, a feast was in order.
We decide upon Restaurant Les Ancetres in Saint-Pierre and were delighted to be treated to a view of the falls by twilight from our table.
