333 EAST 69TH STREET, TOWNHOUSE, NO. 10
The Facts: Two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath duplex.
Asking Price: $1.695 million.
Sale Price: $999,000.
Maintenance: $2,128 per month.
Agent: Jenny Park Adam and Leonor Firstenberg, Brown Harris Stevens.
It’s no surprise that this “townhouse-style” duplex in a gracious East Side co-op was decorated in high style. After all, it was owned by Geoffrey Beene, who lived there from 1977 until his death in 2004 (he also kept a home in Oyster Bay). The fashion visionary—a master of drape and silhouette, who broke convention by using denim and flannel for eveningwear—turned this rather modest pied-à-terre into a resplendent seventies neo–Art Deco fantasy full of mirrors, stainless steel, and Italian tile, a look that Gumley Haft Kleier’s Laurel Rosenbluth describes as “futuristic.” Seen through present-day eyes, however, it may translate as retro-kitsch, which could explain why it took some months (and a price cut or two) to find a buyer. Still, Rosenbluth’s clients plan to keep many of Beene’s details. “Absolutely!” she says. The apartment is, after all, a Beene original, and who knows when the Costume Institute might come calling?