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Manhattan Transfers

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/31 12:15pm

Manhattan Transfers

The Celtic Tiger cashes out.

The Celtic Tiger Cashes Out: Centria Shifts From Irish Investment Vehicle to Asian One

During the last real estate boom, Irish buyers were falling over themselves to buy in the Centria, a glossy tower 35-story tower at 18 West 48th Street overlooking Rockefeller Center. Sight and site unseen, cash-flush Celts were buying off floorplans, in multiples, with gleeful abandon—those were the days!

When New York’s real estate market tanked, buyers in the building—which opened in 2007—saw the value of their investments (they were nearly all investments, rented out while they waited for their pay-out) plummet. Turned out that Manhattan real estate was not always the best way to go about Dublin your money (sorry!). Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/30 11:15am

Manhattan Transfers

Sorry, Ken, but you didn't buy the Hudson.

Californication: Family of State’s Second Lady Picks Up $5.9 M. Tribeca Pad

When the Siebel family of California gaze out the picture windows of their new Tribeca pad, they should be able to see San Francisco—at least, if that old New Yorker cover is accurate..

Jennifer Siebel’s husband may be Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s former playboy mayor and currently California’s lieutenant governor (Larry Page and Sergey Brin provided air transport to their wedding), but the rest of the Siebel family (Jennifer’s mom, dad and sister) is all about New York at the moment:  Jessica, Kenneth and Judy Siebel popped up last week in city records as the latest buyers at 250 West Street, the El-Ad-developed luxury condo conversion (what other kind is there?) in Tribeca. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/29 2:30pm

Manhattan Transfers

Sly, Darren—divert the tourists to the West Village while you escape uptown.

Sex and the City Creator Sells $13 M. Trump International Pad to Australia’s 2nd Richest Man

Sex and the City creator Darren Star may have inundated the West Village with flocks of would-be Carries lining up outside of Magnolia Bakery and blocking the sidewalks as they ponder their love lives via interior monologue, but when Mr. Star rested his head at night, he headed uptown to his 35th floor apartment in the Trump International Hotel and Tower on Columbus Circle.

At least, he used to—the Melrose Place- and Beverly Hills, 90210-creator just offloaded his sky-high pad, according to city records filed this morning, for a lucky $13 million.

Mr. Star’s broker, Brown Harris Stevens managing director John Burger, was tight-lipped about the buyer, who was listed on the deed only as Beverly Park Corporation, domiciled on Wilshire Boulevard (coincidentally, just down the road from Mr. Star’s lawyer). Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/24 2:31pm

Manhattan Transfers

23beekman

Snug Like a Bug With Panoramic East River Views: Paul Rudolph’s Penthouse Finds a Tenant

Tucked away on the far east side, a few blocks north of the global headquarters of the powerful and geriatric (i.e., the United Nations) and across the East River from the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, Beekman Place is arguably New York’s most centrally out-of-way enclave.

A waterfront neighborhood once blighted by industry, Beekman Place’s fortunes were buoyed by a booming real estate market and a new-found respect for the water in the 1920s, and the micro-hood became one of the most exclusive in the city. “They sit in their co-ops,” the mayor in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities said, ”Park Avenue, Fifth, Beekman Place, snug like a bug. Twelve-foot ceilings, a wing for them, one for the help.” Read More

By Kim Velsey 5/24 10:15am

Manhattan Transfers

The three townhouses are not the best raw material for a 60-footer.

Could a Mega Mansion Be In the Works On East 64th Street?

On March 19, the charming 11-room townhouse at 159 East 64th Street came on the market for $14 million, joining its once-removed neighbor at 163 East 64th, which was asking $24.9 million at the time. Then, almost simultaneously, the mansion in the middle—161 East 64th Street—was revealed as the Kips Bay Decorator Show House. Traditionally, the Kips Bay Show House has hit the market after its time in the spotlight—we imagine it would be hard to persuade an owner to turn his or her house over to teams of decorators and hordes of visitors otherwise—and sure enough, last week the show house was listed for $16 million with Sotheby’s broker Roger Erickson.

With all three for sale in a row, we couldn’t help but ponder the possibilities. Given the gaga real estate market, mightn’t some deep-pocketed buyer take a fancy to the 60-foot-wide mega combo mansion? Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/23 2:14pm

Manhattan Transfers

Corten steel: it's not just for Barclays!

Sandy Who? Red Hook Townhouse Tries To Set Neighborhood Record With $2.15 M. Pricetag

“The slum that faces the bay” is what Alfieri, an Italian lawyer in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, calls Red Hook. Wedged in a subway-less corner of South Brooklyn, hemmed in by the docklands and Robert Moses’s Gowanus Expressway, Red Hook was for years—as late as 1988, LIFE magazine called it “the crack capital of America”—Brooklyn’s most notorious slum.

But that was then. Buoyed by an unrelenting wave of gentrification sweeping eastwards across the borough, Red Hook has been enjoying the runoff of demand from neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, which has turned the neighborhood into any other in brownstone Brooklyn: that is, too rich for our blood (and that of most other New Yorkers). Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/22 3:42pm

Manhattan Transfers

101 CPW's mismatched windows might irk a purist, but Mr. Adams' will surely enjoy his gleaming glass grandfathered-in windows.

Nice Apartment If You Can Get It: Gershwin Heir Sells $5.4 M. Central Park West Pad

Completed in 1930, 101 Central Park West is about as famous as the Gershwins’ most famous productions. And for the past three decades, it’s also been home to Marc Gershwin, the son of George and Ira’s brother Arthur. The songwriters’ less-well-known brother was, according to his son, a minor composer who “had the misfortune to be the brother of a dead genius.”

When Mr. Gershwin took over trusteeship of the famous Gershwin music trove—estimated to bring in $5 to $10 million a year—he told The Telegraph that “it was not being well minded: Ira had been very passive and trusted everyone.” Mr. Gershwin has been warier, turning down an all-white Finnish version as well as a more insidious apartheid-era South African production of Porgy and Bess. (That said, they haven’t been as faithful to the original productions as Stephen Sondheim would have liked—he penned a sneering and sarcastic letter to The New York Times decrying a recent adaptation of George Gershwin’s operatic magnum opus.) Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 4:06pm

Manhattan Transfers

We're more than a little jealous of the views.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop $14 M. On an UES Penthouse

The Park Regis at 50 East 89th Street isn’t what normally comes to mind when one thinks of $14 million penthouses. Built in 1974, it lacks the classical prewar touches of its Park and Fifth Avenue neighbors, and the standard unit sizes range from studios to two-bedrooms—not quite the palatial spreads that one expects from an eight-digit Upper East Side tower.

But what it lacks in outward beauty, the co-op makes up for with its interior and its views. Perched on the 32nd and 33rd floors, the unit has jaw-dropping views of Central Park, with just enough city in the frame to give it a Manhattan flavor (“Located in historic Carnegie Hill, The Park Regis offers the atmosphere of a small town,” the building description claims—unconvincingly, if you ask us, the UES being one of America’s densest neighborhoods), but not so much that you can’t make out every feature in the park. The Central Park Reservoir is especially prominent. The grand prewar apartments on Fifth and Park may have stately exteriors, but they generally top out at around half the height of the Park Regis. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 2:40pm

Manhattan Transfers

Good luck.

$100 M. CitySpire Listing: The Most Expensive For Sale By Owner in History?

Long Island real estate scion Steven Klar was obviously not having much luck offloading his massive, octagonal condo at CitySpire Center with Douglas Elliman. The much-maligned “trophy” vanished from the market in January, when Mr. Klar  dumped the brokerage—a win for Elliman?—and decided to lick his wounds for a few months and/or get fired up for another try.

At $100 million, more than any home in New York City has ever sold for, the price was widely mocked. Why, people asked, would Mr. Klar think he could best One57′s penthouses, which have reportedly entered into contract for more than $90 million, in a late ’80s building and a unit that he bought for only $4.5 million in the early ’90s (and hasn’t renovated since)? Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/15 2:20pm

Manhattan Transfers

6 Photos

80 Washington Place

Sousaphonic Village Townhouse Boasts Waterfall, $28.9 M. Pricetag

After watching their townhouse sit on the market for a year without a sale, the owners of 80 Washington Place have decided to take a cue from the previous owner, composer and conductor John Philip Sousa: they’re marching on. They’ve selected a pair of new brokers—Town’s Robert Dvorin and Clayton Orrigo—and cut the ask by a million dollars.

Built in 1839, the 22.5-foot-wide Greenwich Village townhouse has only been owned by only three families over its 175-year life. Its most famous owner, John Philip Sousa, invented the sousaphone and penned marching ballads, including Marine standard “Semper Fidelis” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and was also a committed technophobe. “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country,” he testified to Congress in 1906, presaging the rise of Skrillex. Read More