It was about this time last year that Shonda Novak of the Austin American-Statesman first reported that former cycling champion Lance Armstrong listed his house in West Austin for sale. The price tag was $8.25 million for the 8,000-square-foot property which he bought in 2013.
The house is exquisite. 1706 Windsor Road, in the Old Enfield neighborhood, was built in 1924 and previously owned by Ben Barnes, a former Texas lieutenant governor, says Shonda, but it has been completely remodeled in a manner that retains every bit of charm but brings it fully into the 22nd century. It was remodeled by RWM Designs and was constructed by Michael Deane Homes. The property is a fantastic blend of original charm, modern amenities and timeless design. The Travis Central Appraisal District has the 8,157-square-foot house valued at $2,429,018 million. It is similar in tone to the Spanish Colonial-style mansion he sold in 2013, though the land mass is much smaller: .41 acres versus 1.7. This is the estate Lance told Architectural Digest he would never leave:
He pauses. “When their mom and I split, the kids and I moved around a bunch. But that’s over. This time I said, ‘You will graduate from high school in this house. I promise. Dad’s not moving again.”
That home was highly personalized with an emphasis on casual, family enjoyment. (Armstrong has said he doesn’t find much use for a formal living room.) Lance let each one of his children decorate their own rooms, down to the painted dinosaurs on his (then) five year old’s bedrooms walls. According to the AD article, Armstrong hired Roy W. Materanek, his “partner-in-design-crime since 1995, when the pair worked together on Armstrong’s first house (following up with homes in Spain and New York, a Texas ranch and a getaway in the Bahamas. He also has a home in Hawaii).
Armstrong moved into the Old Enfield neighborhood in 2013. He and his agent, Laura Gottesman, have now reduced the price on the Windsor Road masterpiece to $7.9 million. The listing detail does not give out the address of the home. Last year, Gottesman pulled the listing from its website after the American-Statesman reported on it.
The property is “a fantastic blend of original charm, modern amenities and timeless design,” the website declares. “The home has been meticulously executed with details that include plaster walls, arched doorways, walls of windows and hardwood floors.”
The house is enormous with five bedrooms, seven full bathrooms, one half-bath and seven, yes seven, living areas. That is a sitting area off the master suite with that mirror-like fireplace, and the master bath has his and her bathrooms — his is decked out with rich black granite. I can only imagine the size of the closets. The home has a large, peaceful pool, pool/guest house with full bathroom and kitchenette plus sitting area, and a climate controlled wine cellar with plenty of room for dining. I am trying to count how many bottles it holds — hundreds!
Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times, cycling’s most prestigious race. After admitting in a 2013 television interview that he used banned substances to sustain him, he was stripped of those titles and focused on his work fighting cancer and battling lawsuits.
