When I saw a link to an item on John Wayne's old Big Canyon home being for sale, I figured it must've been a piece from a few years back.
Figured wrong, pilgrim, because the three-bedroom, four-bathroom, 4,448-square-foot house that was on the market for $2.6 million in 2010 is back on the market for $3.95 million now.
Popped housing bubble be damned!
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The Duke's Former Big Canyon Home for Sale
Actually, the Wall Street Journal reports behind its paywall that current owners Irwin and Margaret Much wound up paying $1.175 million for the two-story, Versailles-style pad in 2011 before renovating the home and grounds at a cost that was said to be about equal to the purchase price. Originally from Naples, Florida, the wife's business interests are drawing the couple back to the East Coast.
Marble and limestone fireplaces, subflooring and outdoor fountains, an 80-foot-tall water wall and a fire pit are among the new additions to the property behind Big Canyon's gates at 14 Rue Grand Ducal (“Ducal” meaning “pertaining to a duke”).
The new listing mentions the home that's a chip shot away from the Big Canyon Country Club golf course's fourth tee includes: a gym, a “classic” library with wood paneling, a three-car garage and outdoor living spaces with views of the links. The original listing also noted there's a pool, spa, gazebo surrounded by lush gardens, floor-to-ceiling windows and what was a newly remodeled kitchen back in 2010.
Allison Panetta, Lindsay Bibb, Danny Bibb and Natalie Raney of Villa Real Estate share the new listing, the Journal reports.
It's unclear how much time the screen idol and his then-wife Pilar Wayne spent at the Big Canyon home, although he frequently played poker, bridge, backgammon and Klabberjass at the country club.
The Waynes and their children more famously frolicked in a one-story, 10-room, 7-bath white ranch house at the tip of Bayshore Drive, the back of which faced Newport Harbor. That home was torn down, although captains of harbor cruises routinely identify the abode built in its place as John Wayne's old house.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.