Today in Class Envy: Brooke Astor’s Park Avenue Floor PlanHow DO you fit five bedrooms, three maids rooms, six bathrooms, six terraces, a library, a sitting room, a dining room, several walk-in closets, and a private gallery all in one apartment? We know you were wondering…
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Andy Warhol’s Townhouse Goes on the MarketThe hippest house on the Upper East Side offers a luxurious rooftop terrace, four bedrooms, a library, chef’s kitchen, staff suite, gym, seven wood-burning fireplaces, and serious élan for a mere $38.5 mil.
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Schnabel Schleps Uptown, Hires Fancy Broker for Chupi
Well, someone is getting fancy. Julian Schnabel has hired Brown Harris Stevens, the hoity real-estate brokers that market big-time rich-people properties like 15 Central Park West, to sell the remaining units of his pink palace, the Palazzo Chupi (above). Sure, this makes sense, since the condos are in the range of $27–$32 million, but when we heard it we were a little disapointed, since it doesn’t really jibe with the Schnab’s bohemian, pajamas-wearing style. Except! Max Abelson over at Observer tells us the agents he picked are virtual neophytes: a sales associate named Debra Ortega, whose son his sons met at camp who has never actually had her own listing, and Paddington M. Zwigard, an agent who has never sold an apartment over $10 million, whom we imagine Schnabel chose for her awesome name. See, the Schnab is all about people and the feelings he gets from people, not stuffy stuff like credentials. “I think what he wants is a community that’s comparable to his lifestyle,” Ortega told the Observer, “someone he would feel keen about being neighbors with. I don’t think he’s going to judge if you’re a banker or artist or a top global realtor.” What about money? Does he judge you if you don’t have enough to actually buy in the Palazzo? Because that wouldn’t really jibe with his bohemian style, either. Maybe he should think about that and about the bloggers who really deserve to be in his community. We’re just saying.
Schnabel’s Palazzo Goes Mainstream With $59 M. in Broker Listings [NYO]
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Harbinger Capital Founder Pays $49 Million for Pool Full of Gooch Juice Philip Falcone, the man behind Harbinger Capital Partners, one of the activist hedge funds that recently acquired a large stake in the New York Times, has outdone his partner, noted vagilante Scott Galloway. Falcone and his wife have officially purchased the Guccione mansion, the Post tells us today, for $49 million. In cash. The townhouse, which is on East 67th Street between Fifth and Madison, has 27 rooms, including a massive full-floor master bedroom with a study, a solarium and private terrace, a theater, a wine cellar, a “dance” room, a garden with a greenhouse, a sauna, servants’ quarters, eleven bathrooms, eight fireplaces, and, according to the Observer, a “massive, shimmering Roman-style pool.” Still, “It’s odd to talk about houses like this,” the Corcoran agent who previously handled the listing told the Observer, “but that house had an odd energy to it … Whenever people brought in children, they were ready to leave.” Well, yeah. Think of the things that must have gone on in that pool.
THE $49M TOWN HOUSE [NYP]
Bob Guccione’s Old Mansion, Despite ‘Odd Energy,’ Closes for $49 M. [NYO]
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Daniel Loeb Gets His Dream HouseNotoriously prickly hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb has finally closed on his $45 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West. The five-bedroom, five-bathroom (plus two half-bathrooms!) apartment on the 39th floor is 10,674 square feet, and that’s not including the 709-foot wraparound terrace. It also comes with access to a 75-foot lap pool, around which Loeb can hobnob with neighbors Sting, Denzel Washington, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein; a screening room; English-oak-paneled library; formal dining room (with a private in-house chef); climate-controlled wine rooms (keep your Gewürztraminer chilled!); and a general sense of extreme self-satisfaction, especially if you pay for it in cash, as Loeb did. One issue, though: Loeb’s views of the park will be obstructed by views of Sandy Weill’s $42.4 million apartment. Well, even the rich sometimes suffer, a little.
15 CPW ALERT! Loeb’s $45 M. ‘Panorama’ [NYO]
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Palazzo Chupi Goes on the Market; Intel Editors SchwoonThis may be hard for you to believe since we at Intel are clearly deeply fulfilled by our work, but there are days when we say to ourselves, Selves? Why did we not go into investment banking? Because a life of pounding the pavement and speaking truth to power may be noble, but it’s not gonna get us to the Palazzo Chupi. Yes, today the remaining two units of Julian Schnabel’s pink West Village Palace, having been rejected by Bono, then by Madonna, went on the market. The views (river and harbor, from various terraces), amenities (pool, parking, access to the Schnabe), and schnabulous details (cast-bronze door handles, stone fireplaces, cast-stone railings, beamed ceilings, terra-cotta tile floors) put the price at $27 million (for the duplex) and $32 million (for the triplex). Our rudimentary math skills (another reason we’re not bankers) indicate that it will take us somewhere between 400 and 700 years to save up for our chunk of Chupi. Until then, we can only dream, and moon over the pictures after the jump.
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‘Vanity Fair’ Goes to the SchneighborhoodAs you may know, we at Intel have something of an obsession with the big, pink artist-auteur Julian Schnabel and his big, pink West Village home, the Palazzo Chupi. The Chupi is not just a real-estate development: It is a monument to Baby-Boomer Bohemian Bourgeois lifestyle, containing as it does not only the family Schnabel, but the actor Richard Gere (Maharishi, RIP) and some guy from Credit Suisse, as well as 180 casement-ed windows, earthenware-and-marble bathtubs, cast-concrete countertops, and several hundred emerald-green terra-cotta tiles. It’s also kind of a poignant monument to Schnabel’s career. In the March issue of Vanity Fair, Ingrid Sischy details the making of what she calls his Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”), from when Schnabel first moved into the $2.1 million building (“He covered the walls with red velvet, brought in a few possessions, including Picasso’s Femme au Chapeau, and ran The Godfather on his VCR 24 hours a day”) to the present (“Bono, Johnny Depp, Martha Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and Madonna have all checked out the remaining residences for sale, at prices ranging for $27 million to $32 million”). There’s symbolism here that we don’t want to quite contemplate. But look at the pictures after the jump! They’re Schnabulous.
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Oprah My God! Gayle Takes ManhattanLet the Oprah sightings begin! Gayle King, who is Oprah’s best friend but not her lesbian lover, has purchased an apartment at Place 57 on East 57th Street, according to the Post. The three-bedroom, $7.4 million penthouse features a 768-square-foot wraparound terrace, Viking appliances, two fireplaces in front of which Oprah and Gayle will not snuggle, and three marble bathtubs in which they will not take long luxurious bubble baths together. Could Gayle, who has until now lived in Connecticut, be moving to the big city in order to run Oprah’s new network, OWN? WWD thinks maybe, since Gayle has a background in TV and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, where Discovery Communications, which has a 50 percent stake in OWN, is headquartered. Also, Oprah likes giving Gayle, who is currently the editor-at-large of Oprah’s O magazine, jobs. But not because they are lesbians.
O, That’s Rich! [NYP]
It’s Oprah’s World [WWD]
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Hedge-Funder and Newsbabe Buy City’s Most Expensive Co-opFinancial crisis? What financial crisis? The moment Scott Bommer, CEO of SAB Capital and his wife, Donya, laid eyes on 1060 Fifth Avenue, they knew it had to be the one! Or, rather, the two! Today’s Observer tells us that the couple recently purchased two units in the J. E. R. Carpenter–designed building for $48 million, topping the record for the most money ever paid for a New York City co-op. And, they still have to construct a staircase connecting the two places. But who cares! They’re worth it! And so, says Georgia Shreve, the New Yorker contributor and seller, is the apartment. “It is a beautiful apartment,” she told the paper (Georgia is married to a banker, too, duh!). “Putting in a staircase is no big deal.” Once the staircase is completed, the Bonners will have a sprawling, seventeen-room, seven-bedroom duplex, one block from the Guggenheim and within spitting distance of Central Park. But why go outside when you can simply regard it from your fabulous digs? This place has outdoor space on all four sides of it, including a greenhouse and a south-facing, 114.5-foot-long terrace overlooking the Central Park reservoir. The views notwithstanding, 1060 is a little more modest than some of the other luxury homes on the market — for instance, there’s no gym, room service, or in-house catering by Daniel Boulud — but the building does have a doorman and a concierge, and naturally Scott and Donya will be bringing in their own help. Floor plans for their renovation include a servant’s room, a “formal bar” that the Observer tells us is bigger than their servant’s room — what would they need all that space for, anyway? Brooms? — plus two libraries, two kitchens, and four wood-burning fireplaces, which will be perfect for staying warm in front of when the recession hits.
City’s Most Expensive Co-op Deal Ever [NYO]
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Lionel Pincus’s $50 Million Duplex, and YouThere are three powder rooms in venture capitalist Lionel Pincus’s fourteen-room duplex in the Pierre, which the Observer reported last week is on the market for $50 million, making it New York’s second-most-expensive apartment! And now that Corcoran has the floor plan up on their Website, we can see that it’s everything we’ve ever wanted. Plus, some things we didn’t even know we wanted! The amenities are as follows…
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Leonard Blavatnik Buys a Castle in the SkyLeonard Blavatnik arrived in New York in the seventies dead-ass broke. (Just like our friend Elie Tahari!) But investments in oil fields, copper, and other businesses made him insanely rich, rich enough to drop 41 million pounds on an estate in London and now $150 million bucks on an apartment at The Mark at 77th and Madison, the most money that anyone has ever paid for a place in New York. So what will it get him? Well! The following to be read in the voice of Robin Leach: A personal lift will take Blavatnik up to his 30,000 square foot, 23-bedroom space, the a combination of what would have been five separate units on the top three floors of the building. The place has 26-foot ceilings, some of which are made with landmarked copper, and some of which have skylights. There’s also 3,900 square feet of outdoor space, including a 2,300-square-foot roof terrace with a fireplace. Oh, and there are fireplaces inside, too, multiple fireplaces even though there is also naturally central heat and air-conditioning, along with assorted other amenities, such as a full-size gym, and twice-daily maid service, fresh linens, and room service. Appliances include but are not limited to a Gaggenau oven (which retails for around $5,000) and Sub-Zero refrigerator and two-zone wine cooler. Last but not least, the hotel’s Website states that the bathrooms are “sumptuous” and complete with bidets. Which we guess proves once and for all that, no, Russian billionaires do not conduct their bathroom business quite like the rest of us.
UPDATE: Right, so this is maybe not exactly true. “A letter of intent was signed for those units and that’s the story. It doesn’t mean he bought it,” Post reporter Braden Keil tells Gawker.
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This Is the House That Jane Sold
Is Jane Pratt leaving New York? Lately it’s been rumored she is starting a magazine with Gwen Stefani, who lives in L.A., and according to the Wall Street Journal, she sold her Greenwich Village townhouse this week, which, from the listing, looks like the sort of place you would want to hold onto unless you have a really good reason to leave. (Or, like Jane, you get over your $3.65 million asking price, close to double what you paid for it. But still.) The broker, Brown Harris Stevens, describes 58 Downing Street as a “fantasy home” “decorated by one of the world’s top designers” with twelve-foot ceilings, two fireplaces, turn-of-the-century woodwork, one of those cool basement kitchens, and a landscaped garden, “the perfect space for relaxing with a book in the dappled sun.” That’s so Jane! It’s also so us! Just saying.
Magazine’s Pratt Sells NYC home[WSJ]
58 Downing Street [Brown Harris Stevens]
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It’s Good to Be Vikram Pandit
(To be read in the voice of Robin Leach.)
Vikram Pandit, Citigroup’s newish head of alternative investments, is apparently not so bothered that CAI profit has dropped 40 percent since he started with the division, or that the Old Lane hedge fund he sold them for around $800 million dropped 5.9 percent last month. He’s just plunked down $17.9 million for Tony Randall’s apartment in Central Park West’s Beresford Building, a ten-room spread that occupies an entire floor. According to the listing, it is a “truly superb residence,” with “superb light,” “impressive park views,” herringbone wood floors, a fireplace, coffered ceilings, a butler’s pantry, wine storage, and a private elevator. But none of that matters to Pandit, who told New York earlier this year that he never got into “the Gordon Gekko idea of Wall Street.” He just really, really loved The Odd Couple.
Citigroup’s Pandit Buys Tony Randall Co-Op for $17.9 Million [Bloomberg]
Related:
•Vikram Pandit Will Always Be Daddy’s Little Boy [12/13/07]
•Vikram Pandit is the New CEO of Citigroup! [12/11/07]
•Citigroup Shakeup Shakes Out For Pandit; [10/12/07]