If these walls could talk.
The modern four-bedroom cylinder that Whitney Houston & Co. called home for a few short years lies on about 5 acres of land at 22 North Gate Road, in Mendham, N.J.
Shrouded in cool mist this winter morning, it is a sad and lonely place. Although she never went so far as to name any of her estates, this was to Whitney Houston what “Graceland” was to Elvis Presley.
Dead flowers left by her adoring public lie in piles on the ground at the front gate, where bodyguards in black used to stand watch. Beyond stretches the unkept lawn, no longer verdant and manicured. Further back lies the abandoned home of one of America’s greatest divas and her only husband and child.
One can imagine what it was like to pull up in this driveway with their new baby, in happier times. Whitney Houston’s castle was custom designed and erected ca.1985 by a Garden State builder, Ron Decheser of General Building Construction Co. in Livingston, N.J., for another couple. It was sold to the rising superstar two years later, when the 1985 debut hit “You Give Good Love” launched Houston’s career and bank account into the stratosphere.
It may not have the dazzle of Beverly Hills. But Mendham, N.J., is ritzy – and expensive. Nielsen marketing data describes it as “bucolic” and “sprawling,” an “oasis for affluent Baby Boomers” with six-figure incomes. N.J. Gov. Chris Christie owns a house nearby. Singer Houston paid $2.7 million, which is not a lot of money for a woman who would set international Billboard sales records by the end of the year she moved in.
House… of cards
She never sold it. In 1993 she bought the corner house next door, at 1 Cross Way, for $573,477, according to real estate records. Three years later, her troubled life unraveling, Chevy Chase Bank began foreclosure proceedings for falling behind on mortgage payments. She had filed for divorce just one month earlier.
Whitney Houston had met 20-year-old Robert Barisford “Bobby” Brown backstage at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards when she was dating Eddie Murphy.
Six years her junior, the R&B; rapper was invited to her 26th birthday party — a dazzling, celebrity-studded event held in the North Gate Road back yard — where boyfriend Murphy gifted her with a huge diamond ring.
Yet, three years later, it was bad boy Brown she would wed in the garden, under a gazebo drenched with roses, orchids and moonlight.
They would sail into the sunset in a honeymoon financed by MCA and Arista Records, flying to Europe on the Concorde for a romantic cruise on a private yacht befitting the music moguls they both had become — she more than he.
Halt! Police!
North Gate Road was their destination when Mr. and Mrs. Bobby Brown were stopped at gunpoint by police and surrounded at JFK Airport during a stakeout on the wrong limo.
Hapless New York City police called it a case of mistaken identity. Their real target had been an international drug dealer. The limo and its African American occupants, including the couple’s new baby, Bobbi Kristina, seemed to fit the police profile. Houston demanded an apology. They complied.
The Mendham house served as official headquarters for Houston’s management company, Nippy Inc.
“Nippy” was Houston’s nickname as a child. According to Jet, Nippy, Inc., placed the winning $240,000 bid for the 1994 foreclosure auction of her husband’s 14,000-sq.-ft., 5-bedroom Atlanta mansion, which Brown had purchased pre-Whitney. Under auction terms, Nippy would also pay the bills for Brown’s first mortgage, approximately $650,000 according to Nippy attorney Thomas Weisenbeck.
But Nippy began to slide on payments. The Atlanta house would eventually be seized and sold at another auction, fetching $1.4 million.
A Star is Born
Houston’s real estate kerfuffles were dwarfed by her breathtaking success. In August 2001, she signed the biggest record deal in music history at the time, a contract with Arista/BMG for $100 million. In every way, Houston was a legend.
Yet, the hits did not keep on coming. Houston’s career, and some say her marriage, began to stumble.
One night in December 2003, Houston called Alpharetta, Ga., police, to report a violent scuffle during which an enraged Bobby Brown had threatened to “beat her ass and then struck the left side of her face with his open right hand,” according to the police record. Brown was arrested, fingerprinted, and locked up.
Money woes and more drugs followed. A few months later, in March 2004, Houston would check into an undisclosed substance abuse clinic for five days. It would be the first of many rehab visits.
In 2005, for a single, blessedly short season, the Brown family lived and breathed under the watchful eyes of 1.1 million viewing voyeurs in the reality television show “Being Bobby Brown,” with Houston usually appearing under the influence and unengaged.
The Bravo show, panned in Variety as “a bad home movie crossed with an image-polishing infomercial,” lasted 11 episodes before it was canceled.
Down, down, down
Between rehabs, Whitney tried comebacks. In 2008, England’s Mirror estimated that her take from one appearance at the Caudwell children’s charity netted as much as 2.5 million pounds – in U.S. dollars, that’s $5 million. The headline read: “Stars support Whitney Houston comeback.”
But there would be no comeback. Her tours cancelled, albums on hold, she slipped farther from grace toward insolvency. Efforts to unload her many properties fell to the wayside as the U.S. real estate market crashed.
In 2010, tabloids reported she had at last sold her Cross Way home for $940,000 — a $366,523 profit before commissions, fees and capital gains. Everyone prayed that Houston’s life might at last be on the mend.
It wasn’t.
Claiming yet another comback, Houston was booed off European stage after stage. In Denmark, a prescient reviewer wrote: “She looked and sounded like a person who doesn’t have many years left to live.”
Daughter on drugs?
The following year, on March 3, 2011, a Daily News headline would scream: “Bobbi Kristina Brown in drug scandal: Daughter of Whitney Houston denies snorting coke in photos.” The Mirror reported that three weeks before she died, Houston failed the physical given by her plastic surgeon to see if it was safe to give her a facelift.
Real estate listings tout the fact that 22 North Gate Road is the house Whitney Houston was married in. The ceremony, held July 19, 1992, was covered by Jet magazine, which dubbed it “the wedding of the decade” held in “a $10 million home.” Imagine the landscape, 800 guests filling air-conditioned tents built over the swimming pool. Among those present: Donald Trump, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Gloria Estefan, Clive Davis, Dick Clark, Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Dionne Warwick, Teddy Riley.
Her father, John Houston, gave the bride away. Jet would write: ” In the months and years to come, their fans can look forward to the talented couple making harmonious music together. For as they express so well on their soon-to-be released duet on Brown’s new album, Bobby, they certainly have ‘Something In Common.'”
But this was not to be.
Twenty years ago, the Rev. Marvin Winans, “a close friend” of the family, conducted Houston’s marriage ceremony. On Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012, Rev. Winans will again preside, delivering the final sermon as she is gently laid to rest.
