Seasons change, so do cities. And so do mansions! Sometimes, two mansions becomes one mansion. This is called mansion marriage, and it was illegal until a landmark Supreme Court decision a few years ago ruled that a ban on mansion marriage was unconstitutional. So now any old mansions can marry each other—provided they are already next to each other. Take, for example, the two townhouse mansions owned by Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick in Manhattan’s West Village. The couple bought them separately, for a combined $35 million, but now, Page Six speculates, they are going to make them marry, turning them into one colossal home that will immediately become the most dominant residence on the block.
Parker’s reps have in the past denied that there are any plans for a lavish mansion marriage, but Page Six has now seen documents filed by Parker’s business guy saying that there will be “interior demolition of partitions,” which is as sure a sign of a mansion-combining as anything. Word is that when—O.K., sure, if—the two homes are conjoined into one, the new residence will be a staggering 13,900 square feet, with a 2,100-square-foot backyard. Why a family of five needs that much space—James Wilkie’s gonna be away at college in four years!—is beyond us, but that is not for us to question. They bought those mansions fair and square, so if they wanna make them kiss and get married and have babies, that is their prerogative.
But seriously. What does one do with two mansions? Are we talking bowling alley here? Mini movie theater? Of course all the jokes are that Parker will use much of the second mansion to store her shoes—because, you may remember, she played a famous shoe monster on the TV series Sex and the City. And you know what? If she wanted to, she could. But I doubt that’ll be the case. I bet you—if this mansion matrimony happens at all—that they’re just going to make everything wider. Like, wider living room, with a wider couch, and wider chairs, and a wider coffee table. Wider bedrooms with extra-wide beds. A very wide dog. You know, kind of like a weird funhouse where everything is oversized or something. Parker and Broderick seem whimsical like that, don’t they?
Lest you think they’re crazy—real-estate barons who want to eat the world—they are by no means the first people to do this kind of “Frankenmansion” thing. They’re not even the first New Yorkers. Business Insider notes that this kind of mansion-combining is happening all over town right now. In fact, Parker and Broderick are rather modest when you consider that Madonna, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Internet huckster Sean Parker, and others have all combined three townhomes into one mega-mansion. It’s getting to be that if you just live in one regular house that is the house it was always built to be and is not connected to any other buildings, you’re kind of the biggest chump in New York. That’s probably why Parker and Broderick are—allegedly!—doing this. They don’t want to be chumps anymore.
Though, just breaking the walls down and leveling the floors or whatever they do in this unnatural procedure seems like a failure of imagination. Two mansions next to each other isn’t that cool. You know what is cool? Two mansions on top of each other. Just start stackin’ those things, S.J.P.! See how high you can go! All you have to do is uproot the one townhouse, have a big crane come in to put the townhouse on top of the other one, and then just cut a hole in the ceiling of the one townhouse and a hole in the floor of the other. Boom, you’ve got a big, tall house. You could put a fireman’s pole in if you wanted! It’d be so fun, the kids would love it. Just like they loved going to Wayside School, which employed a similar architectural philosophy.
But, if the couple isn’t feeling that adventurous, I suppose two townhouses side by side will do. And, again, with all that square footage they can really make the thing into anything they want. A hundred small powder rooms. Four massive floor-through bedrooms. An indoor basketball court. A small maid’s quarters for Kristin Davis to sleep in whenever she’s in town. One dimly lit chamber containing only a marble bust of Andy Cohen that emits an ominous humming noise in the night. An empty white room with “SHOES” painted on one wall, a commentary on the emptiness of materialism or something. There are really a million ways you could go with a thing like this. Our main question is, with this new twice-as-big house, will S.J.P. have to answer 146 questions next time?
