Sam and Jessica Still Selling Stillwater Estate

SELLERS: Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard
LOCATION: 4th Street. N., Stillwater, MN
PRICE: $1,950,000
SIZE: 5,500 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 3 full, 1 half and 1 quarter bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Historic estate on lush 2.5 acres in heart of Stillwater. 1892 Victorian w/ breathtaking St. Croix River Valley view. Spectacular home & landscape featured in Architectural Digest. Artistically inspired gardens, remarkable renovation & preservation.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to Sheila Shedsomelight way up in the lake filled hinterlands of Minnesota, Your Mama has learned that two-time Academy Award winning actress Jessica Lange and her Pulitzer Prize winning playwright/actor huzband Sam Shepard have listed their home in Stillwater, MN for sale with an asking price of $1,950,000.

It is certainly no secret among the real estate gossips of the world that the much lauded and applauded pair made a home and raised a couple of childrens in Stillwater, a teeny tiny town north and east of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

However, it seems that sometime back in 2004 (or sometime around 2004) the couple decided to bee-line it out of Stillwater at least in part because Miz Lange grew disenchanted with the increasing boojification of the area. In an interview with the New York Daily News in February of 2008, the tough talking ladee was quoted as saying, "When we first moved to Stillwater, it still felt like a real place...Now it's all gift shps and these terrible condominiums. It was a little town with a great deal of character. Everything gets yuppified, I guess." We don't know nuthin' from nuthin children, but we imagine the Stillwaterians were none too pleased to hear their famous (and former) neighbors speaking shit like that to the press. None the less, Your Mama can understand Miz Lange's psychic plight against the homogenization of America. Recently that ubiquitous Starbucks popped up in our little weekend getaway town and we were not exactly thrilled about that bit of new bizness either, partick because there are already two other successful and locally owned coffee shops already on the main drag. Ack!

Sorry children, Your Mama digresses. The current asking price of the Lange/Shepard estate is $1,950,000, a far cry from what the not into the Hollywood hoopla couple wanted back in 2004 when recent reports reveal they first put the 2.5 acre estate on the market with an asking price of $3,300,000. A year later, the asking price was karate chopped to $2,600,000 and the main house and the guest house were being offered for sale as separate parcels as well.

Records and reports say that the couple picked up their 1892 Victorian on 4th Street N. in 1994 for just $415,000. Listing information for the 5 bedroom house indicates that is measures in at (approx.) 5,500 square feet and includes three fireplaces inside and landscaped grounds overlooking the St. Croix River Valley outside. Other rooms in the house include living and dining room, a library, an eat in kitchen with butcher block counter tops, a family room a fa-boo screened porch on the second floor.

The couple clearly spent big bucks restoring the original woodwork and updating the old gurl to include modern amenities such as air conditioning. In addition to the main house, the property includes a not so nice in the winter detached garage and a guest house that sits adjacent to the heated swimming pool. The tiered gardens also feature a small fruit orchard, ponds, woods and rolling lawns.

Some of Your Mama's nearest and dearest hunker down in Minneapolis and while we like visiting that neck of the woods to walk through The Walker and eat at The Modern Cafe, we could never actually live in a place that becomes an ice sheet several months of the year. However, despite the kinda creepy mosaic statue in the garden, we do think this is a lovely house that will make a nice home for some well to do Minnesotan with children who enjoy ice hockey, sledding down the backyard lawn and other winter activities.

Yes children, we too notice that the interior spaces could use a bit of a work over by a nice gay decorator capable of functioning in sub-zero temperatures, but there's really nothing wrong here besides it looking a mite generic. This bland, blah and lifeless pallor may in fact be due to the fact that the Lange/Shepard do not, according to reports, live here anymore.

In fact, most reports indicate that the couple decamped to New York City were records reveal the couple forked over $3,400,000 in April of 2005 to purchase a 9th floor two unit combination apartment on lower Fifth Avenue. The full service building sits conveniently near enough to Washington Square Park that the couple–should they be so inclined–could easily score a dime bag on their way to the corner deli.

Recent reports reveal that the couple has not cut all ties to Minnesota and property records do indeed indicate the Lange/Shepards still own a good sized spread up near Lake Superior in a town called Holyoke, not so far from the towns of Duluth and Cloquet, where Miz Lange was raised.