Golden Girl Rue McClanahan’s Former Encino Home Is Listed for $5.5M

If there’s a person out there who hasn’t fantasized about a slumber party with the Golden Girls’ Blanche Devereaux, we’ve yet to meet them. Now’s your chance to channel the famous Southern belle — the former home of actress Rue McClanahan is now on the market.

Curbed reported on Monday that the former home of the late actress (who passed in 2010) was freshly listed in the upscale Royal Oaks neighborhood in Encino, CA for $5.5 million. (McClanahan bought the property for $1.35 million in 1988, at the height of her Golden Girls fame, but sold to the current owners just seven years later, according to the LA Times.)

A shock to no one who loved her most beloved character and hot ticket, the property was built and designed in 1951 by the same architect who built the Playboy Mansion, Arthur Kelly. But, as others have reported (with mixed emotions from this writer), the home’s interiors were recently redesigned by Nick Berman. (Just imagine all the Millennial pink of the original!)

According to the listing for 16001 Woodvale Road, McClanahan’s one-time estate is a 2.61-acre gated property featuring a single-story Country Colonial-style home with four bedrooms and six bathrooms, all the swoon-worthy indoor and outdoor entertaining and living spaces you’d expect from the gregarious actress, including a grotto-esque pool and spa and near-epic mature gardens, plus some more family-oriented features like a full basketball court, children’s playground, large dog kennels with matching dog run — even an indoor 11′ x 10′ “dog house” just off the garage — and separate “family wing.”

The 5,368 square feet interior also boasts a music room, maid’s quarters, service rooms, skylit dining room, gym, theater, mud room, office, “sumptuous living room with walk-in bar” and “superb family kitchen.”

The “lushly landscaped exterior, a cross between a botanical garden and a national forest, highlights the custom waterfall/creek running from the western edge of the property, past the gazebo, to the rock-rimmed swimming pool,” according to the realtor, “with numerous gardens [that] feature paved walking paths through the hills, meditation benches, a cactus garden [and] an outdoor kitchen.” The master suite also features a private patio and spa.

Or, as the LA Times wrote, “the Arthur Kelly-designed home of Rue McClanahan remains golden.”