(Photo: Ted Thai/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

The apartment that the late architect Philip Johnson shared with his partner, David Whitney, overlooking the sculpture garden he designed at the Museum of Modern Art, has finally sold. Despite, or perhaps because of, its provenance, finding a buyer took the better part of a year. The 1,400-square-foot one-bedroom is on the eleventh floor of Museum Tower, a 52-story condo that went up as part of an expansion of the museum in the mid-eighties. Although the apartment is not a Johnsonian masterpiece like his Glass House in New Canaan (now a museum), there are details, like an intricately coffered ceiling, that he designed. “Fifty percent of the potential purchasers didn’t appreciate what he did,” says Richard Ferrari, who shared the listing with his Prudential Douglas Elliman colleague Drew Glick; many pseudo-buyers just wanted a tour. The new owner’s a Johnson fan and plans to preserve the apartment. It sold for less than its initial asking price of $2.5 million.

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