Meryl Streep, born in 1949, has spent decades playing characters of extraordinary complexity on screen. Off screen, her real estate choices tell a quieter but equally revealing story. Across Connecticut, New York City, and California, Streep has assembled a portfolio of homes defined by architectural integrity, long-term ownership, and privacy over spectacle.
This is a full rundown of Meryl Streep’s houses — every major property she has owned, sold, or currently holds, including purchase prices, design details, and what each home says about how she actually lives.
Where Does Meryl Streep Live Now?
She keeps two homes, one on each coast. There is no public record of how she divides her time between them, but the Salisbury, Connecticut estate she bought in 1985 remains her long-term base, and a mid-century house in Pasadena, bought in 2017, is her California home. No sale of either has been reported. Work often takes her to New York — she has spent long stretches there filming Only Murders in the Building and The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opened in May 2026 — but she has not been reported buying anything in Manhattan since she sold her Tribeca penthouse in 2020.
The Connecticut Estate: Where She Raised Her Family
In 1985, about a decade after graduating from the Yale School of Drama, Streep and sculptor Don Gummer, whom she had married in 1978, paid $1.8 million for an estate in Salisbury, Connecticut. The town sits in Litchfield County, a rural stretch of the state that had almost no celebrity footprint at the time. Streep herself grew up in suburban New Jersey, mostly in Bernardsville, in the comfortable household of pharmaceutical executive Harry Streep Jr. and commercial artist Mary Wolf Streep.
The property covers roughly 90 acres, including a former sheep farm and a lake reported at 47 acres. The main house is a gray contemporary structure, deliberately unassuming from the outside, set behind high stone walls with several smaller buildings around it: a pair of barns, a caretaker’s cottage, and a dedicated art studio built for Gummer’s sculptural work.
The couple reportedly poured several hundred thousand dollars into renovations after the purchase and raised all four of their children there: Henry Wolfe, Mamie Gummer, Grace Gummer, and Louisa Jacobson. In the four decades since, the estate has never been put on the market, making it the longest-held asset in her portfolio and the closest thing she has to a permanent home base.
That continuity has outlasted the marriage itself. Streep and Gummer do not live together: in October 2023, her representative confirmed they had been separated for more than six years and had “chosen lives apart.” They have not divorced, and reports suggest they still share this property.
The Greenwich Village Townhouse: A Historic Landmark in Private Hands
In 1995, Streep and Gummer paid $2.2 million for a five-story red-brick townhouse on a quiet Greenwich Village side street. The building was constructed in 1845 in the Greek Revival style, meaning it was already a century and a half old when they bought it.
The scale is substantial: 6,585 square feet across five floors, with six bedrooms, six fireplaces, and a rooftop garden. The kitchen was built for serious use — two ovens, two dishwashers, a wine cooler, and warming drawers — and the dining room could seat up to 16 people.
The architectural high point is the fifth floor, which functions entirely as the primary suite and is capped by a 25-foot skylight running the width of the space. The primary bathroom, at 450 square feet, is finished in Italian Calacatta marble.
Streep reportedly renovated the interior while keeping the building’s original structure and street-facing character intact — notable stewardship for a mid-19th-century home. The 12-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling French windows stayed as core features rather than being stripped out for convenience.
Streep and Gummer held the townhouse for a full decade. In 2005, they sold it for $9.1 million to Johnson & Johnson heiress Elizabeth “Libet” Johnson — a strong return on the original $2.2 million, though hardly a flip. The house has changed hands several times since, most recently for $17.25 million, underscoring how well it held its value.
The Tribeca Penthouse: Her Most Talked-About New York Property
Shortly after selling the Greenwich Village townhouse, Streep and Gummer paid $10.3 million for a penthouse on Laight Street in Tribeca, inside the River Lofts building, in 2006.
The unit spans 3,944 square feet on a single floor, with four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms, accessible only by private elevator. Three sides open onto a 10-foot-wide landscaped terrace, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing views of the Hudson River.
The interior is restrained and modern: white walls, white kitchen cabinetry, a butcher-block island, and Brazilian walnut floors throughout. The living and dining area centers on a wood-burning, freestanding fireplace — an unusual detail for a high-floor urban penthouse. There’s also a media room and access to an outdoor kitchen on the terrace.
In 2018, they listed the unit for $24.6 million. After several price reductions, it sold in early 2020 for $15.8 million. The gap between ask and sale reflects a softer luxury Manhattan market at the time, not any shortcoming in the property itself.
The Hollywood Hills Research House: An Architectural Footnote
Streep’s first California purchase came in 2013, when she paid $4.5 million for a 3,700-square-foot home in the Hollywood Hills, just above the Sunset Strip. Built in 1954, it carries a specific architectural pedigree: the Honnold & Rex Research House.
The firm of Honnold and Rex designed the home as part of a program sponsored by Architectural Products magazine, which began its own series of experimental “research” houses in 1954, in the spirit of the better-known Case Study Houses. The result was a structure built almost entirely from concrete, wood, and glass, chosen for their relationship to natural light and indoor-outdoor flow.
The plan is open, with double-height ceilings in the main living area and a two-story stone wall anchoring the central fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls look out onto fountains and walled courtyards, and the four bedrooms and four bathrooms all face trees and sky.
Streep didn’t hold this one long. In 2014, about a year after buying it, she sold it to former MLB player Alex Rodriguez for $4.8 million. He later tried to sell it for as much as $6.5 million, but it finally went for $4.4 million in August 2019, suggesting the market had cooled relative to what he paid.
The Pasadena Home: Her Current California Base
In 2017, Streep bought a 3,087-square-foot home in Pasadena for $3.6 million — roughly $500,000 below asking, a notable outcome in a high-demand market.
The house was designed by architects Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams, a South Pasadena firm that worked primarily in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Before Streep bought it, the home hadn’t changed hands in nearly 50 years.
Built around 1959, it has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, with exposed cinder block walls, terrazzo and wood flooring, a raised-hearth fireplace, skylights throughout, and a common area enclosed by two full glass walls. The property frames views of the San Gabriel Mountains from most rooms.
Outside, a swimming pool sits behind natural boulders, giving it the look of a lagoon rather than a typical suburban pool. There’s also a detached studio that works as an office.
The Eaton Fire Evacuation
The house’s foothill setting nearly trapped her in January 2025. When the Eaton Fire broke out, Streep was ordered to evacuate on 8 January, only to find that a fallen tree had blocked her driveway — the only way out. According to her nephew, the journalist Abe Streep, writing in New York magazine, she borrowed wire cutters from a neighbor, cut a car-sized hole in the fence the two properties shared, and drove out through the neighbor’s yard. The house itself was not reported damaged.
What Her Real Estate Choices Actually Tell You
Most celebrity real estate coverage treats properties as status symbols. Streep’s portfolio resists that framing.
She buys for architecture, not address
The Greenwich Village townhouse was a protected 19th-century building. The Hollywood Hills property was a magazine-sponsored research project. The Pasadena home is a relatively obscure example of late-1950s California modernism by architects who never reached wide name recognition. None of these were purchased for prestige alone.
She holds for years
The Connecticut estate has been hers since 1985. The Greenwich Village townhouse lasted a decade. The Tribeca penthouse stayed in her portfolio for roughly 14 years. In a market where wealthy buyers often flip properties within two or three years, her hold periods stand out — and they have paid off: the townhouse returned about $6.9 million on its purchase price, and even the discounted Tribeca sale came in $5.5 million above cost. Outside estimates of her overall fortune range from about $100 million to $160 million; none is based on disclosed figures.
She prioritizes privacy structurally
Stone walls in Salisbury, a private elevator in Tribeca, distance from the road in Pasadena — in each case, the layout itself creates separation from public visibility. That’s a design preference, not an accident.
She values natural light above nearly everything else
Skylights, floor-to-ceiling glass, open plans oriented toward views — across all five properties, the most consistent thread is the relationship between interior space and available light.
Meryl Streep’s Houses at a Glance
| Property | Bought | Price | Sold | Sale price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salisbury, Connecticut estate | 1985 | $1.8M | Still owned | — |
| Greenwich Village townhouse | 1995 | $2.2M | 2005 | $9.1M |
| Tribeca penthouse | 2006 | $10.3M | 2020 | $15.8M |
| Honnold & Rex Research House, Hollywood Hills | 2013 | $4.5M | 2014 | $4.8M |
| Pasadena mid-century home | 2017 | $3.6M | Still owned | — |
Meryl Streep’s real estate history is notable for what it doesn’t include: speculation, rapid flipping, or the kind of trophy-property buying common among celebrities at her level of fame. Instead, the pattern maps cleanly onto her stated values — privacy, a genuine interest in architectural history, and a willingness to hold onto something of quality long after the initial excitement fades. Like her career, it looks built on patience and judgment rather than spectacle.
Sources
- Country & Town House — Where does Meryl Streep live? Inside the star’s property portfolio
- StreetEasy — Meryl Streep’s former Greenwich Village townhouse lists for $28.5M
- CNBC — Meryl Streep sold her NYC penthouse for $16 million
- The Oppenheim Group — Meryl Streep buys Honnold & Rex Research House (2013)
- Dwell — A-Rod lists architectural Research House by Honnold & Rex
- The Hollywood Reporter — Meryl Streep’s escape from L.A. fires involved cutting open a fence (Jan 2025)
- CNN — Meryl Streep and Don Gummer have been separated for six years (Oct 2023)
- Wikipedia — Meryl Streep (early life and family)
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