The name Hancock Park might not connote anything special for Bostonians, but it means everything right now to Cambridge local Mindy Kaling.
“It’s one of these places that no one ever leaves,” Kaling told Architectural Digest in a story featuring her newly renovated Los Angeles home. “I fell in love with three houses, but I kept losing to these Chinese billionaires who were paying in all cash. I wish I were an Indian billionaire.”
Luckily, Kaling finally secured a property and just moved in a few weeks ago after 10 months of renovations. Designer Katie Ridder spearheaded the project of transforming the 1920s historic home into a luxurious, tasteful residence bursting with color.
“She didn’t want bleached floors. She didn’t want everything whitewashed or stripped down. She wanted a lot of layering,” Ridder told Architectural Digest. And the accompanying video and slideshow certainly justify how kaleidoscopic Kaling’s vision was. Bold blues, amongst many more hues in the pallette, carry from the aqua stair runner to a cerulean tile backsplash on the fireplace. “[It] is probably my favorite feature of the entire house,” said Kaling in the video.
Homages to Boston can also be found throughout the house, despite the 3,000 mile gap in between. The dining table and chairs, repurposed with yellow upholstery, are the same ones from Kaling’s childhood home. The set was her late mother’s “favorite piece of furniture in her house.”
Kaling also commissioned artists to create many of the artworks throughout her home. Two paintings in the foyer, placed above another piece of furniture from her parents, were created by her close friend and Cambridge artist Julia Powell.
But all the changes in the property were not just cosmetic. With the help of Koffka Phakos Design, some walls were rearranged and knocked down to accommodate Kaling’s plans of hosting family and friends in a more expansive, flowing space. Here’s hoping a New England property is next on her fixer-upper list.
Take a closer at her new pad in the video below.
