Onstage, as the Monster in “Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein,” Shuler Hensley gets to roar, tap dance and even win the girl. The drawback? He has to live in a creepy castle in Transylvania.
But in real life, Hensley’s New Jersey home – a 21-room, 6,500-square-foot, 1895 Victorian mansion just 30 minutes from his Broadway theater – is his castle.
“I look forward to the end of the workday,” he says, “so I can come to a real home.”
Playing the Monster, Hensley admits, “is exhausting.” Among other things, he has to tap dance in 4 1/2-inch platform shoes and a heavy, hot costume.
“But the payoff is worth it,” he says, referring to the audience’s reaction to his show-stopping number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” “And it’s a chance to work with Mel Brooks.”
Hensley notes that he’s had a long history being the Monster.
“I played him in the movie ‘Van Helsing,’ and I recorded the music for the other ‘Frankenstein’ musical that’s playing off-Broadway now,” the 6-foot-3 actor/singer says. “I was also an ape in ‘Tarzan.’ I’ve played them all – monsters, apes, animals.” (In a non-monster role, he won a Tony for his performance as Jud in “Oklahoma!”)
He and his wife, Paula DeRosa-Hensley, a yoga teacher, had a long history of renting on the Upper West Side, but with a growing family (their daughter, Skyler, is 7, and their son, Grayson, is 3), they decided it was time to buy. Because prices in the city were “ludicrous,” according to Hensley, the couple decided to look in the surrounding areas.
This past June, they walked into the kitchen of this house in Montclair, N.J., and knew it was for them.
“We like to stay in and cook,” Hensley says. “And we always said we’d die to have a big kitchen.”
This kitchen is so big, it’s actually three separate rooms: One room is a cooking area with granite countertops and a Viking stove, another is a pantry, and still another is a room just for the dishwasher. All the kitchen’s cabinets are made of maple, and the ceilings are tin. In addition, there is a windowed breakfast nook, plus two more small kitchens on the second and third floors.
The home is 112 years old, yet the Hensleys are only its fourth owners – and every one of them has lovingly maintained it.
The property has five bedrooms, 6½ baths, five fireplaces (each with its own motif), a 1,000-square-foot ballroom, hand-painted ceiling frescoes from the 1890s in the music room, crystal chandeliers, a solarium with a custom-made bar, a formal dining room, a den with a 60-inch TV, a library with walls of shelves and cabinets left by previous owners, a “million” closets, a hot tub, a koi pond and a swimming pool.
Plus, the entire place was in move-in condition – the Hensleys didn’t even have to paint. For all of this, they paid just $1.4 million.
The house is also full of history. Enrico Caruso sang under the frescoed ceilings in the music room, where today there sits a rare, 1910 Steinway Parlor Grand piano, a gift from Hensley’s father, who bought it 30 years ago for $9,000 (today it’s worth $100,000). In the entrance hall, an 8-foot-by-6-foot mirror shares space with the grand stairway, which is guarded by a 3-foot-tall bronze statue of a knight (his name is Eric) who stands on the end of the banister and holds a lit torch in one hand and a sword in the other.
Downstairs is an enormous safe that was put in when the house was built.
“It’s so big they couldn’t get it out. I’ve never seen a safe of that size or thickness in a home,” Hensley says.
“The basement actually was a bomb shelter – the walls are as dry as a bone and about 3 feet thick,” he adds. “I’d love to put a little home theater down there.
“On the third floor, there’s a ballroom with walls lined with antique theater and art posters. We also inherited a pool table that’s in the ballroom. It converts to a ping-pong table for the kids.”
Another inherited treasure: One of the previous owners closed in the front porch and set up a bar. The Hensleys like to sit out in what is now a solarium and watch the sun set.
“Because this house has been so well-maintained all these years, I can open a closet and find something that’s 100 years old,” Hensley says. “One of my projects is to research all this.”
Shuler Hensley’s Favorite things
* Spacious kitchen
* Solarium with its custom-made bar
* Ballroom with its pool table
* Master bedroom with fireplace
* Swimming pool
* Front door – “You can open the top half and still keep the bottom half closed.”