Barbra Streisand’s Houses Have Always Been as Fabulous as the Singer Herself

Barbra Streisand’s houses could be considered art projects rather than just simple shelters. The legendary performer’s love of interior decorating and art collecting dates back to before she had the budget to back it up. “I had no money to buy art, so I would buy old picture frames and put them on white walls, just framing space, which I thought was beautiful,” she once mused of her pre-fame days. Now, the actor and singer has the resources to take her passion projects to their height; from an early-American-themed estate with an invented historical backstory to an entirely Art Deco–style guesthouse, Babs tends to take her design projects to the next level. Read on to learn more about the properties that Streisand has owned.

Railroad apartment

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an instinct for decoration,” Streisand recalled to Architectural Digest in 1978. “I can remember my first apartment in New York—it was a railroad flat on Third Avenue—and how I filled it with screens and lacquered chests. Even when I had no money, there was always the need to transform my surroundings.” The then 19-year-old was on the cusp of her Broadway debut in 1961 when she moved into that first apartment, a tenement building with a seafood restaurant on the ground floor. “It was a third‑floor walk‑up, and as soon as you started up the narrow bare‑bones staircase, there was the smell of fish,” Streisand wrote in her 2023 memoir, My Name Is Barbra. The unit had “four little rooms in a line and a bathtub in the kitchen, and the rent was $60 a month.”

The Ardsley apartment

Streisand married her I Can Get It For You Wholesale costar, Elliot Gould, in 1963. The newlyweds moved into a duplex inside the Ardlsey, an Emery Roth–designed building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Situated on the 21st and 22nd floors of the Art Deco–style structure, the apartment spanned about 3,600 square feet, with an additional 2,500 square feet of terraces overlooking Central Park. Architectural Digest toured the dwelling in 1978 and Babs showed off her extensive collections of Art Deco and Art Nouveau furnishings and decor. “It took me a little time to be able to come out into the open and honestly say, ‘This is me, Barbra, and this is what I like,’” the star said then of developing her interior decorating style.

The penthouse unit remained under Streisand’s ownership until she sold it for $4.25 million in 2002, according to The New York Times.

Upper East Side town house

The dining room at Streisand’s former Upper East Side townhouse, which is currently listed with Corcoran.Photo: Evan Joseph for Corcoran