Feed

Manhattan Transfers

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/22 7:04pm

Manhattan Transfers

With an in-home diet that's "95 percent raw," we doubt Ms. Huss will be getting much use from the oven and microwave.

Ten-dollar Juices Buy Erica Huss a $2.25 M. Pad At One Brooklyn Bridge Park

What does a $65-a-day juice habit buy you? As a consumer, you might not come away with much more than hunger pangs and the ability to fit into your old high school clothes if you keep it up for long enough. If you’re juice purveyor Erica Huss, co-founder of Blueprint Cleanse, on the other hand, it buys quite a bit: a $2.25 million waterfront condo in Brooklyn Heights, to be exact.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses may be gone, but the suspension-of-disbelief remains: Ms. Huss just picked up a massive two-bedroom-plus-den at One Brooklyn Bridge Park, according to city records. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/18 6:00am

Manhattan Transfers

asdf

Tower Heist: Téa Leoni Picks Up $5.1 M. Riverside Drive Bachelorette Pad

Actor and actress couple David Duchovny and Téa Leoni haven’t offloaded their old New York City triplex yet (though they’ve reportedly been broken up for almost two years), but Ms. Leoni has already moved on: the Deep Impact star just picked up a three-bedroom combo spread at 190 Riverside Drive.

The eighth-floor corner unit is decked out in a thoroughly traditional (dare we say geriatric?) style, with “exquisite detailed moldings, stained glass doors, original fireplace mantels, bay windows and coffered ceilings”—fancifully-coffered ceilings beyond the standard square patterns, by the looks of it—according the listing description. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/17 3:59pm

Manhattan Transfers

Try not to get blood on your Annabelle Selldorf-deisgned walls, Marina!

Marina Abramović Buys $2.65 M. Glass Box of Her Very Own

Tilda Swinton may have stolen Marina Abramović voyeuristic thunder at MoMA with her sleeping-in-a-glass-box shows, but when it comes to displaying oneself in glass boxes, Ms. Abramović will not be outdone: the Serbian grand matriarch of performance art just picked up a $2.65 million two-bedroom pad at Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House.

The eighth-floor apartment at 330 Spring Street, in Hudson Square, was asking $2.6 million, but listing broker Suzun Bennet at Town Residential managed to get a bit over the asking price. “It was on the market for quite a while as an investor apartment,” Ms. Bennet told The Observer, but as soon as the rental tenant who was living there moved out, it sold. Unfortunately for seller Eliot Ferguson, though, it didn’t quite fetch the nearly $2.7 million that he paid for the unit at the end of 2006, at the height of the real estate bubble.

The 1,722-square foot condo’s interiors were done by Annabelle Selldorf, an inoffensive choice for a woman who once declared, “Art should be disturbing.” Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/17 3:41pm

Manhattan Transfers

Mr. Modine was not pleased that some of his kids' artwork showed up on Twitter.

The Awkward Video Worked: Matthew Modine Sells Chelsea Duplex for $2.1 M.

Most celebrities scrupulously shield their real estate purchases through a web of limited liability corporations, and most brokers steadfastly refuse to discuss their bold-faced clients. Not Matthew Modine: when he wanted to sell his Chelsea pad at Loft 25, he made a video.

Mr. Modine didn’t get the full $2.29 million for the one-bedroom-with-office duplex at 420 West 25th Street, but his video was quite a hit, according to Halstead broker Mark Friedman, who had the listing. “It definitely got more hits than any other video we’ve done in the history of Halstead.” And Mr. Modine and wife  Caridad, did walk away with $2.1 million—a respectable premium over the $1.73 million they paid for the 1,668-square-foot spread in 2008. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/16 3:31pm

Manhattan Transfers

Despite SoHo's artist-in-residence laws, we're guessing the co-op board would rather Mr. Cai not create gunpowder art in his residence.

Cai Guo-Qiang Explodes Onto Soho Real Estate Scene

Artist Cai Guo-Qiang is best known for blowing things up—he designed the opening and closing ceremony fireworks shows for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and once built a “10,000-meter barricade of fire [that] was sustained with 1300 pounds of gunpowder” in the middle of the Gobi Desert. But for the sake of his new neighbors, he might have to temper those artistic urges at home: the Chinese contemporary artist just bought the penthouse at 542 Broadway, in SoHo.

Mr. Cai and his wife, Hong Hong Wu, picked up the massive 4,120-square foot spread for $5.95 million—a price that would surely make his father, an ardent communist who “thinks Communism now is ruined,” according to his son, by the cultural and economic freedoms that the country has experienced since over the past few decades, wish for a Cultural Revolution redux. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/15 6:08pm

Manhattan Transfers

Will Sheila Nevins' eighth apartment at the Chelsea Mercantile be her last? Stay tuned! (Photo courtesy Patrick McMullan.)

Eighth Time’s a Charm: HBO Honcho Signs on for Another Season at the Chelsea Mercantile

When Sheila Nevins first started at HBO as “Director of Documentaries,” the cable network had only done one, and she only signed a 13-week contract. Over three decades later, and save for a three-year diversion in the ’80s, Ms. Nevins is still at HBO, and is still heading up the channel’s documentary division. We can only hope the contract she just signed at the Chelsea Mercantile has as much staying power.

And this is nowhere near Ms. Nevins’ first purchase in the condo building. In fact, it’s at least her eighth. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/12 5:14pm

Manhattan Transfers

One of the building's model units.

It’s a Hit: Sylvia Rhone Closes $4.2 M. Contract at 250 West Street

Sylvia Rhone may have grown up in Harlem and made her career managing hip-hop and R&B acts, but the music mogul prefers to come home to a Downtown address at night.

And Tribeca is about as far downtown as a luxury condo-seeker can get. Ms. Rhone just sealed a deal on a three-bedroom, 3.5-bath spread at the warehouse-to-condo conversion 250 West Street, city records show. She was so taken with the place that she dropped $4.32 million on it—a few thousand more than the $4.25 ask—buying the unit from the developer, former Plaza Hotel-owner El Ad. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/11 10:40am

Manhattan Transfers

The terrace might not be quite as big as what he had in the Village, but the courtyard is a nice consolation prize.

John Barrett Experiments With New Style At Parc Vendome Condo

During the last few years, super fancy salon-owner John Barrett has catered to the informal inclinations of his upscale clientele by opening both a braid bar and a ponytail bar, where time-crunched fashionistas can pay stylists $50 to pull their hair back with an elastic band.

But when it comes to real estate, the famed stylist has abandoned his laid-back Downtown ways. The salon owner has ditched the tired Village—teeming with tourists and college students—for the more classical Parc Vendome uptown at 333 West 56th Street. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/09 8:35pm

Manhattan Transfers

"Sorry, but the figurine stays," we imagine Mr. Cohen told the photographer at Corcoran.

The Rumors Are True: Steve Cohen Lists $115 M. One Beacon Court Penthouse

Over the past year, hedge fund honcho Steve Cohen has shelled out $150 million for a Picasso, $60 million for an East Hampton estate and $616 million to get the Securities and Exchange Commission off his back. Now, it looks like he wants to get a little bit back—$115 million, to be exact.

Via our friends at Real Estalker comes word that Mr. Cohen’s 9,000-square foot spread at One Beacon Court, the residential portion of the Bloomberg Tower at 151 East 58th Street, has officially hit the market. Mr. Cohen and his brokers—Deborah Grubman and David Dubin at Corcoran—are hoping to knock reigning real champion 15 Central Park West out of the park and set a New York City record.

But with no outdoor space, three blocks between the building and the park and nowhere near the name recognition of 15 Central Park West, can Mr. Cohen’s 51st-story duplex do it? (Even if it can’t, he only paid $24 million for the apartment back in 2005, so he’ll come out ahead either way.) Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/05 2:25pm

Manhattan Transfers

It's magical, but not magic.

Steel Magnate Gets A Little (But Just a Little!) Less Greedy at 15 CPW

Given the massive profits that many early buyers at 15 Central Park West made flipping their units, it sometimes feels like no price is too high for an apartment in New York’s newest pre-war building.

Well, it looks like steel magnate Leroy Schecter has finally learned how much is too much: $95 million.

Mr. Schecter just cut a whopping—or, at least, it would be whopping in any other building—$10 million from the ask on his 35th-story apartment, to a still-stratospheric $85 million, which would put it below the $88 million record price that Dmitri Rybolovlev paid for Sandy Weill’s penthouse. Read More