The former home of Richard Pryor in Northridge, California.
Chad King/Melissa DiMeglio
An estate in L.A.’s Northridge neighborhood once owned by Richard Pryor — and the site where the late comedian famously set himself on fire in 1980 — has hit the market.
Known as Hacienda de los Suenos, the gated, walled property is currently owned by one-time pro football player Rashard Mendenhall, who became a TV writer on Ballers post-NFL. According to Mansion Global, Mendenhall purchased the spread, located in the Sherwood Forest enclave of Northridge, for $2.5 million in 2017; he’s now set his sale price at $4.236 million, an homage to the total rushing yards he had in his career of 4,236.
“I’m a fan of Richard Pryor,” Mendenhall told Mansion Global. “He’s iconic, and I feel a special connection to him because we’re both from Illinois — I’m from Skokie, and he’s from Peoria. He’s a man of such magnitude that when I saw the property, I thought, ‘What was good enough for him is good enough for me.’”
Pryor bought the house in the mid-1970s and was freebasing cocaine when, as People magazine has written, he began “pouring 151-proof rum on his shirt and setting it ablaze with a lighter.” The comedian suffered burns covering more than 50 percent of his body. Pryor would go on to later joke about the incident in his comedy routines.
Pryor sold the 2.2-acre estate in 1989 for $940,000. And the house in which Pryor lived was destroyed by 1994’s Northridge earthquake.
It was replaced with the current two-story, four-bedroom hacienda-style main residence, which harks back to the property’s 1910 roots as a ranch and citrus orchard.
Listed with Hilton & Hyland/Forbes Global Properties’ Neil McDermott and Beate Kessler-McDermott, the estate includes 9,000 square feet of living space in total across six buildings with six bedrooms in total. There is a detached guest house, a pool house with a kitchen, a dance studio/gym (which the listing notes could be turned into a recording or production studio), a children’s playhouse, sauna, three-car garage and kennel.
A legal horse property, the estate also features outdoor amenities such as event parking for around 25 cars, a pool with spa and waterfall, a barbecue pavilion, tennis court, putting green, vegetable garden, citrus trees and a green lawn.