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Wilt Chamberlain’s Los Angeles bachelor pad is for sale and the asking price is a cool $15 million.
The nearly 9,395 square-foot home is famous for being one of the most unique mansions in Bel Air. It was custom built by Wilt in 1970 and cost him $1 million dollars to build.
Wilt passed away in the home in 1999 from heart failure. In 2002, it was purchased by TV writers George Meyer and Maria Semple for around $3 million.
In 2009, a Russian investor named Dmitri Novikov bought it from the pair for $6.5 million. Novikov has renovated the home to include more modern features and designs since his initial purchase. He’s been trying to flip the property for years, taking it on and off the market a few different times.
The Story of How Wilt Chamberlain’s Mansion Came to Be
The story begins when Wilt met architect David Tenneson Rich through a mutual friend. Wilt asked Rich if he could find a hilltop lot to serve as a trophy home.
Rich then started taking helicopter rides to look for land in the Santa Monica mountains. He spotted a hilltop where a former anti-aircraft missile site used to exist during the Cold War and found that to be the best parcel.
Wilt purchased the 2.5 acres of hilltop land Rich picked out for $150,000.
Wilt purchased the 2.5-acre lot on that cul-de-sac for $150,000 and Rich started building. Wilt named the home “Ursa Major” the Latin translation for his nickname “Big Dipper.”
Features and Amenities of Wilt’s ‘Ursa Major’
Ursa Major has a unique geometric shape with giant doors and windows and a 40-ft high ceiling. If one had to pin the type of architecture it would be brutalist, with influences from the work of Frank Llyod Wright.
In a 1972 interview with the New York Times, Wilt mentioned he wanted the home to feel like a cathedral, “I wanted the feeling of the house to be like the Baptist church I remember when I was growing up.”
A stone walkway leads up to a 2,000-lb front door. Stepping inside, one is immediately faced with the enormous ceilings and a wide-open great room with a retro sunken conversation pit. In the conversation pit is a fireplace and stone chimney.
Amenities include a giant wrap-around swimming pool, a media and billiards room, a gym, a redwood sauna, and numerous spots for dining and lounging.
The current owner and seller Dmitri Novikov has since renovated the home to make it a bit more modern. Novikov added a chef’s kitchen with stainless steel appliances and reconfigured the downstairs to include some offices, garages, and guest suites.
Today it’s a 6 bed, 6 bath with a 10 car garage. Novikov also removed Wilt’s sunken-in bath at the end of his bed in the master suite as well as the walled mirrors in the master bath.
Historical Significance of the Home
Shortly after moving into the home Wilt and the Lakers went on to win the 71-72′ Championship—which is often looked at as the greatest NBA team of all time. He’d go on to finish his career out as a Laker in that house and live there up until his passing.
In a 2004 biography of Wilt, titled Wilt: Larger Than Life, author Robert Cherry likened Wilt’s house to a smaller version of the Playboy Mansion.
Wilt had claimed to have slept with 20,000 women in his autobiography he published in the early 90s. One can connect the dots that his Bel Air mansion was the grounds for a number of soirees, to put it lightly.
While the $15 million asking price might be a bit much, there are two historical connections to the building that are essentially priceless.
The first is its connection to Wilt, and the second is the relevance of being an ambitious piece of architecture of its time.
If only walls could talk…