Katy Perry was once embroiled in a five-year real estate battle over a convent, which ended in one 89-year-old nun's death in court.
Now, the restaurateur who fought with Perry over the Los Feliz property has listed another former convent in the nearby Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Dana Hollister has put the landmark Paramour Estate on the market for $40 million, listed with Sally Forster Jones of Compass.
Although the asking price is far above any nearby home, the property has a grand history, with the space to match: a 22,000-square-foot mansion with 15 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, sitting on five acres.
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The Spanish Mediterranean-style estate was commissioned by socialite and petroleum heiress Daisy Canfield in 1918, and it was completed in 1923 by architect Robert D. Farquhar, who was also responsible for the Olympic Club, Festival Hall at the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition, and Beverly Hills High School.
During the time she owned it with her husband, silent film star Antonio Moreno, the estate was used as a boarding school for orphaned girls and young women amid the Great Depression.
After Canfield died in a car accident on Mulholland Drive in 1933, the estate was eventually gifted in 1953 to the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, who used it as a convent.
It was eventually sold to Hollister in 1998 for $2.25 million. She's since restored and converted it into a boutique hotel, frequently renting it out for events and shoots, including the 2004 music video of Britney Spears' "My Prerogative".
"It was very fortunate that the property was a girls' school and later a convent for so many decades because it was not subject to any dramatic alterations, which would have changed its intrinsic beauty," she told the Los Angeles Times.
Hollister ripped up the carpeting to reveal the floors' original walnut, among many other restoration projects — including, preserving the Prohibition-era secret cabinets in the dining room.
"The bold colors, opulent gilded mirrors, crystal chandeliers, allegorical artwork, taxidermy and silk upholstered settees that decorate the mansion set a feeling of environmental submersion or time travel," she continued. "A visitor can experience what it must have been like to visit the mansion in its glorious prime."
Hollister is also responsible for such local culinary staples as Cliff's Edge, 4100 Bar, Brite Spot and Villains Tavern. But she's most known for her legal battle with Perry.
The Smile artist, 36, made a cash offer of $14.5 million for the Echo Park convent in 2014, which the archdiocese accepted. Soon after, Hollister offered the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary $15.5 million, as they claimed to have the right to sell the property themselves.
Hollister was ultimately ordered to pay $6.5 million in damages, and the property has still not sold.
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