Whoopi Goldberg was born and raised in Manhattan, and by all accounts will always consider herself a New Yorker. However, the multihyphenate has spent a considerable amount of time in California, and she’s owned some rather luxurious residences on both coasts over the past few decades. Goldberg (whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson) grew up in the Chelsea-Elliott Houses in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which is where she lived until she moved to California after getting married in 1973 when she was just 18.
“My room was in the back, just a bed and a bureau and windows,” she previously told Vulture of her childhood pad. “It’s a great place to grow up, because we were outside 98% of the time, winter and summer. We all were poor, and we all knew it, but it somehow didn’t really stop us from doing anything.” Since making it big on movie screens, TV, and Broadway (Goldberg holds a coveted EGOT title for winning awards at the Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys), she’s turned that anything-is-possible attitude into a revered career, and her extravagant homes are proof of her ongoing success. Here, we’ve rounded up some of Goldberg’s most noteworthy properties to date.
1985
When Goldberg moved to Berkeley in the ’70s, she worked a number of odd jobs while trying to get her comedy and acting career off the ground: bank teller, bricklayer, and even a mortuary cosmetologist. She hit it big with her one-woman show, The Spook Show, in the early ’80s. Shortly afterwards she purchased her first home, a restored 1890 Victorian-style house, for $335,000. The residence measured approximately 1,455 square feet and included a two-story barn that was illegally converted into a cottage-style guest house measuring an additional 1,635 square feet. The home featured New Orleans–style architecture, with a large front porch and gingerbread-style overhangs and columns. Goldberg hung onto the pad for 30 years before finally selling it for $2 million in 2015.
1993