Seattle houses – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 6, 2010October 5, 2010

The “Grey’s Anatomy” House

Another location that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry took me to stalk while I was visiting the Pacific Northwest earlier this year was the Seattle-area home owned by Meredith Grey (aka Ellen Pompeo) on the long-running television series Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve only actually ever seen one episode of the show – the Season 2 episode titled “Enough is Enough” in which my friend Lukas Behnken was a guest star – but since we were in the area and since Kerry knew the address, I figured I might as well stalk the place. I have heard such amazing things about the series over the years, though, that I really do think I need to start tuning in. Especially since the main house used in the series is such a cool one! I was actually quite shocked to discover that the Grey’s residence was located in Seattle, as the show is taped for the most part right here in Los Angeles – at both Prospect Studios in Los Feliz and the Veterans Administration Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center in North Hills. But apparently, the cast and crew make a few treks each year up to the Seattle-area to shoot some exterior and establishing shots, including all of the shots of Meredith’s home.

On the show, the house originally belonged to Meredith’s mother and while she announced in the pilot episode that she was planning on selling it, she later decides to keep it and live in it with her fellow Seattle Grace Hospital interns Izzie Stevens (aka Katherine Heigl) and George O’Malley (aka T.R. Knight). The home has been featured regularly in all six seasons of the series.

The address of the home on the series is said to be 613 Harper Lane, but in reality it is located in the Queen Anne Hill neighborhood of Seattle on Comstock Street. The home, which was originally built in 1905 and according to fave website Zillow is currently worth about $1.2 million, boasts 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and 2,740 square feet of living space.

On a side note – I apologize for the short blog posts I’ve been publishing as of late. My parent’s recent, and what has been on-going, move – which has taken place over the past four weekends and has involved packing up a 2,000 square foot residence, staging that residence for sale, moving my parents temporarily into their friends’ currently vacant home, putting 1/3 of their possessions into a storage facility, and the other 2/3’s into two portable POD moving containers – has really taken it out of me. And it’s definitely been a group effort, too. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, even pitched in to help us out! Not many people I know would be willing to help their friends move, let alone their friend’s parents, but that’s just the kind of guy Mike is – and it is why he is one of my very best friends! Anyway, escrow on my parent’s former house closes TODAY (halleluiah!), so the move is finally over – for the time being at least – and I can now get back to my normal life, normal routine, and normal blogging. After a nice hot bubble bath and nice, tall glass of champagne, that is! Thanks for bearing with me over the past few weeks, my fellow stalkers!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Kerry for taking me to this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Grey’s Anatomy house is located at 303 Comstock Street in Seattle, Washington.

August 10, 2010July 18, 2010

Jessica’s House from “Sleepless in Seattle”

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while visiting Seattle this past May was the home where Jonah Baldwin’s (aka Ross Malinger’s) best friend Jessica (aka Gaby Hoffman) lived in fave movie Sleepless in Seattle. Fellow stalker David, who I had the pleasure of meeting and doing some stalking with during my brief three-day vacation, managed to track down Jessica’s house just about a week before I headed up to the Pacific Northwest. He found the locale after posting an inquiry on this area filming locations thread on the West Seattle Blog website. David had spent quite a bit of time trying to find the house on his own without much luck, so thankfully the West Seattle Blog readers offered to lend a hand and through some amazing detective work came up with the right address. YAY! So, I immediately put the home high up on my must-stalk-while-in-Seattle-list and could NOT have been more excited about seeing it!

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The exterior of Jessica’s house was actually only featured in one very brief scene in Sleepless in Seattle in which BFF’s Jonah and Jessica mail a letter to Annie Reed (aka Meg Ryan) which they have written on behalf of Jonah’s father, Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks). After putting the forged letter in Jessica’s mailbox, the two sit on her front porch and wait for the mailman to come pick it up.

Even though the home appeared only once, and very briefly at that, I was still absolutely floored over seeing it in person because, as I’ve mentioned before, Sleepless in Seattle is one of my very favorite movies of all time. And I am happy to report that Jessica’s house still looks very much the same today as to how it appeared onscreen in Sleepless, which is pretty darn amazing being that filming took place over 17 years ago! Sadly, though, the mailbox where Jessica and Jonah mailed Annie’s letter is not there in real life. I am fairly certain that it was never truly a part of the house, but was a prop that was brought in solely for the filming. 🙁 So sad! Also missing, of course, was Jessica’s mom’s “Four Winds” travel agency sign that was displayed on the home’s front porch in the movie.

I am fairly certain that the actual interior of the house was used in the filming, as well.

According to a comment posted by a West Seattle Blog reader named “westseattledood”, a home located just a few doors down from Jessica’s stood in for the Chicago-area residence where Sam and Jonah lived during the beginning of Sleepless. Only the interior of that house was shown in the movie in the scene in which Sam’s sister, Suzy (aka Rita Wilson), tells Sam how to prepare the food she has made for him.

And even though the residence’s exterior was never shown in Sleepless, since we were less than a block away, I just had to stalk that property, too! 🙂

Big THANK YOU to David and to the West Seattle Blog readers for their help in finding these locations! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Jessica’s house from Sleepless in Seattle is located at 1816 4th Avenue North in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. The home used for the interiors of Sam and Jonah’s Chicago residence can be found just down the street at 1701 4th Avenue North.

July 26, 2010July 23, 2010

Kurt Cobain’s Former House

While visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May, my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry took me to stalk a location that, at first, I actually wasn’t all that interested in seeing – the Seattle-area home where Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain passed away on April 5, 1994. I’d never really been into Kurt Cobain or Nirvana or the Grunge Movement as a whole – let’s face it, if it’s not sung by Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, or Michael Buble, I probably haven’t heard it 😉 – which is why seeing the Cobain home wasn’t really one of my top priorities while visiting Seattle. But I am so, so thankful that Kerry took me there, as Kurt’s former residence is an ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL place. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that it is one of my favorite places that I’ve ever stalked . . . ever! And that has nothing to do with the fact that Kurt Cobain once lived there, but is simply because the property is just that spectacular. I can’t even put into words my feelings about the place – it is just extraordinarily serene, quiet, and stunningly beautiful. In fact, the property is so peaceful that it is extremely hard to imagine someone like Courtney Love ever living there.

The Cobains first purchased the three-story, five bedroom, 7,808 square foot Cape Cod-style home, which was built in 1902 and is located in Seattle’s upscale Denny-Blaine neighborhood, in January of 1994 for $1.13 million. At the time, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz lived next door. Less than four months later, on April 8, 1994, Kurt’s lifeless body was discovered by an electrician in the greenhouse located above the property’s garage. The Nirvana singer was dead at the age of 27 from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The coroner later estimated that Kurt had most likely died three days earlier, on April 5. And while reports continually say that Kurt passed away in a “greenhouse”, I believe the space was actually more of a spare room or a gardener’s shed than it was an actual greenhouse. Sadly, Courtney had the entire garage and the room above it razed in 1996 after growing annoyed at the many stalkers who came by to take pictures of it. She later said that the garage had become “bigger than the Space Needle”. You can see a picture of what it used to look like here. Courtney ended up selling the home in 1997 to a non-celebrity couple and, along with daughter Frances Bean, relocated to Beverly Hills. According to the Cellar Door Blog, Courtney put a clause in the home’s sale documents stating that she would be allowed to remove a certain willow tree from the property at any future point in time should she so choose. Supposedly, some of Kurt’s ashes were spread at the foot of that tree, but it is unclear whether or not she ever returned to remove it.

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My favorite part about Kurt’s former home, and what I think makes the property so special, is the fact that it borders the absolutely gorgeous Viretta Park. In 1901, the 1.8 acre park was donated to the city by C.L. Denny, son of Seattle founder Arthur Denny, who named the space in honor of his wife, Viretta Jackson Denny. Supposedly, Kurt liked to walk the park grounds during the brief four months he lived next door and it’s not very hard to see why. The park has an incredibly calming affect – and that’s coming from someone who, admittedly, is a major Type A personality! 😉 I honestly can’t say enough about the place. The grounds are small and intimate, the foliage is lush and green, and the deep blue waters of Lake Washington are visible just across the road. It’s truly breathtaking.

Since Cobain’s death, the park has become a sort of unofficial memorial to the late singer, with messages scrawled to him on benches and trees. And while I normally wouldn’t like that sort of thing at all, in this case, for whatever reason, it seems to fit.

My fiancé was very proud of the above photograph which he took while we were there as he managed to get both the bench and Kurt’s former house in the frame.

When I got home from Seattle, I immediately purchased Ian Halperin’s controversial book Love & Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain, which I had seen in a bookstore a few years before, but had never had any particular interest in reading. Until I visited his house, that is, at which point I remembered the book and knew that I just had to buy it. And I must say that it was FABULOUS! I literally could NOT put it down. I highly recommend it to everyone, whether you were a fan of Nirvana or not. I recently loaned the book to my friend Nat and she, too, said she could NOT put it down.

In an ironic side note – While Kurt’s former home is located at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East, we mistakenly first stalked the property located at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard West. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to ever make this mistake, either, because the owner of the property at 171 West has a sign in his front yard which points stalkers in the direction of the correct location. Love it!

Big THANK YOU to Kerry for taking me to this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Kurt Cobain’s former house is located at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East in the Denny-Blaine district of Seattle. Howard Schultz’s former home is located next door at 120 39th Avenue East.