The bright white, postmodern Miami-area house made famous in Brian De Palma’s Scarface is on the market, according to reports from The Miami Herald and others. The asking price? A cool $237 million.
The 2.38-acre property is situated on the water in Key Biscayne. It boasts 868 feet of water frontage, a boat dock, a 20,000 sqaure-foot overwater helipad and piano-shaped pool. The 13,000 square-foot home itself includes floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline, five bedrooms and a steel-and-glass elevator.
The elevator is the centerpiece of one one the movie’s most memorable scenes — of which there are many. In it, Tony (Al Pacino) visits the home of his new boss, the drug/car dealer Frank (Robert Loggia). As they banter, Frank’s “girl” Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) descends in the building’s see-through elevator. It’s an entrance akin to Scarlett O’Hara descending the staircase at Terra. Tony is transfixed.
The property has a provenance that goes far beyond Scarface. In the early ’70s, it was part of a compound known as The Winter White House where Richard Nixon often stayed — albeit in a much more modest bungalow. The helipad was built around that time. The bungalow was later demolished.
The current structure was built in about 1981 by a man named Roberto Striedinger, who was a pilot “convicted of smuggling cocaine for the Medellín drug cartel,” according to one account cited by the Wall Street Journal. Fitting, then, that the structure also features in the credits of Miami Vice.
According to the Herald, if the property goes for anywhere near asking, it will easily be the priciest home ever sold in Miami-Dade County. The standing record belongs to a March sale to Mark Zuckerberg. He paid $170M for on unfinished home on Indian Creek island.