Back in 1986, there were apparently quite a few people sneaking around the build site at 5622 Riverside Drive. Separated from Riverside Green by a deep thicket of uncultivated trees and shrubs, the massive new home was going up slowly but surely. Truckloads of stone, wood, and other materials arrived daily. Some of that wood was plywood. You could use it for ramps and whatnot. Your humble author, it must be admitted, participated in a small amount of Bernie-Sanders-style liberation from the capitalists, securing a half-sheet of plywood for a sloppily-constructed ramp that launched me and brother Bark into the air about fifteen times before collapsing into instant garbage.
I should point out that we weren’t normally the stealing types, but the house under construction was so far out of our experience that it seemed like it didn’t belong in reality. Who builds a massive cathedral of a home right next to a bunch of duplexes and multi-family dwellings, anyway? On the upward curve of a road where people regularly did 70+ mph, making it sheer murder to try getting in or out of the place?
Never in our various visits to the site, both thieving and merely touring, did we see a young dental student nosing around the place. But there was such a fellow…
The rumor in our neighborhood was that Prince was building the house for his mother. For some reason, I continued to accept that story well into my thirties, despite its patent idiocy. Why would Prince build a house for his mother in Ohio? He had no connection whatsoever to Ohio. Somebody must have just made the story up, perhaps after listening to “Purple Rain” one or ten too many times. We all believed it. The fact is that the house did, in fact, look like something a rock star would build for his mom.
The truth is that is was built by a Columbus businessman named Michael Anderson. The Franklin County Auditor says that it sold for $2.7 million in 1991, then for $1.4M in 1996 to football player Dan “Big Daddy” Wilkinson, then for $2.15M in 2001 to a fellow who let it go back to the bank. In 2008, David Baddour paid $1.8M for it. As a dental student in 1986, he’d been obsessed with the home as it was being built. He bought it right after he turned forty. Which right there reminds me what a fucking loser I am, not buying any $1.8M houses at that age. Dr. Baddour, who owns four dental practices in Columbus, then put the proverbial shit-ton of money into it, covering one ceiling with 24-karat gold paint and restoring all of the parts of the home that had fallen into disrepair over the years.
Two years ago, he listed it for over five million bucks.
It didn’t sell.
So he still has it, but not to worry; he’s not hurting. He just wanted to buy an even bigger “fixer-upper” down the street, apparently. I’m sure that home wasn’t in Riverside Green.
You can see the interior of the house, which features secret passages and stained glass and imported marble toilets, in the WSJ and the Columbus Dispatch. Virtually all of the house was rebuilt by the good doctor from scratch, so there’s no reason to think that’s what it looked like when Bark and I were kids. Nor is any of it to my taste; I’m a devotee of mid-century modern, as readers of my Tomorrowland piece will recall.
Still. If I won the lottery tomorrow (which would require me to buy a ticket) I’d make the good dentist an offer. Surely the man who lives in that castle is the king of Riverside Green.
Bonfire of the Vanities?
I always wonder about folks who live in or would even want to live in , a place like that .
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Most of the Millionaires I know , live reasonably modestly , if they have Musical/Artistic taste/talent , they build in / add on amazingly nice studios but the actual house is rarely any bigger than necessary unlike the nouveau rich Chinese , the rappers and white trash who win the lotto .
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Why build anything for others to look at ? .
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Damn kids are on my lawn again ! .
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-Nate
At least in places like Columbus, Ohio, where you’re extremely unlikely to be involved in any social/business circle that would view this house as a positive place to be social or do deals.
This sort of thing makes a lot more sense outside of New York, or in Hollywood:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3626606/The-guy-took-abuse-home-Owner-100-000-month-Hollywood-Hills-party-mansion-hits-Saudi-prince-suing-hosting-wild-cocaine-stripper-fueled-graduation-party.html#ixzz4Aoa9zube
FWIW ;
It _is_ possible to have that big of a party and not trash the place , I know this first hand .
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Low class fills all shoes , rich or poor .
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-Nate
$5 million for a house in Columbus?!? It might be possible to buy a house on the beach in Malibu (a small one) for that kind of dough. Or at least in Newport Beach, anyway.
Nice house, but how many garage bays and does it have extra parking for boats and trailers?
I mean, that’s what’s important when looking at houses, right?
It has a lot of parking space… a little light on garages.
S’alright, Menards can hook me up with two-three pole barns right quick!
About 40 years ago on the South Atlantic coast, when the streets were running with rainwater, a couple of us discovered that plywood, easily removed from a dilapidated shed up the street, made acceptable surfboards — for a little while, anyway.
As a slightly older man I grew up in cookie cutter construction boom neighborhoods of the (very) early 80’s.
Without your taste and refinement I liberated a great deal of “scrap” lumber (we had a very liberal definition) for building bicycle ramps, tree houses, general “forts” and a host of other absurdities dreamed up by my and my friend’s pre-puberty imaginations.
I feel no guilt as a purchaser of several homes in a modern version of “Over The Edge” style developments, I assumed these costs as the cost of ownership.
If I evaluate it honestly, I think the developers came out ahead. But my banana-seat Huffy jumping youth does not care.
He just wonders why I am so lame…
The truth is that in the long run, the developers win over all of us!
I’m always amazed that, when the asset value is sufficient to reward some effort on the pictures, estate agents (realtors) will drop a blue sky in via photoshop rather than, you know, turning up when the sun’s out.
Always had the effect - to my eyes at least - of making these places seem provisional and tenuous; like they exist only in an architectural mock up, or quotidian Ballard novel.
Maybe that’s what we’re looking at here -quotidian Ballard novels.
“Maybe that’s what we’re looking at here -quotidian Ballard novels.”
PROPS
“He just wanted to buy an even bigger “fixer-upper” down the street, apparently.”
Which is the house that Prince built. Proving once again, all rumors are true.
I worked for Mike Anderson in 1987 after graduating from college. Went to a party there around New Years 1988. He called the house “Inys Dree” as I recall. The gig didn’t last long and that was the only time that I saw the inside, but it was very nice then.