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Red Carpet Real Estate

By Kim Velsey 5/16 3:12pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

The exact same staircase used in Apple stores.

Sinatra’s Storied Penthouse Snagged By Chinese Scion

Frank Sinatra’s old duplex at 530 East 72nd Street finally got under someone’s skin. And this despite a “meticulous” renovation in recent years that included the installation of the exact same staircase as the one in the Apple stores and some other rather hideous unique design choices.

The New York Post reports that the “glittering grotto in the sky”—as Andy Warhol once referred to the Sinatra-era party pad—is in contract to the daughter of a Chinese technology tycoon. Maybe she found the Apple staircase homey? Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 3/27 2:17pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

No Picassos in sight, though we're sure Ms. Acquavella Dejoux can fix that.

Real Estate Scion Sells $8.85 M. Park Avenue Pad to Acquavella Art Heiress

Acquavella Galleries may have expanded beyond its wheelhouse of Italian Renaissance works in the 1960s, but for Eleanor Acquavella Dejoux, the limestone-faced neo-Italian Renaissance apartment house at 840 Park Avenue is the only place to buy.

Ms. Acquavella Dejoux picked up a duplex maisonette—though unlike the traditional maisonette, it does not have its own outdoor entrance—at the 1912 Park Avenue co-op for $8.85 million, according to city records and first reported by the New York Post, and got a storage unit on the 14th floor thrown in for good measure (at least we hope it’s a storage unit—the floorplan ominously labels the 83-square foot standalone room as ”staff/storage”). Read More

By Kim Velsey 3/14 4:51pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

Chelsea Clinton's new digs?

Madison Square Park For Chelsea: Former First Daughter Buying At The Whitman

Well, we can’t say that we’re surprised that NBC correspondent and former first daughter Chelsea Clinton has inked a deal to move into The Whitman. (At least, if the New York Post can be believed—apparently the whole Clinton family posed for photos with the construction workers when visiting the four-unit luxury condo last week).

The Whitman, at 12 East 26th Street, is just the kind of old-fashioned with lots of new-fangled bells and whistles luxury product that has had buyers frothing at the mouth these days. To wit, 15 Central Park West, 18 Gramercy Park and 135 East 79th Street. A brand new or gut-renovated building molded into classically-styled condos on a Park is a fail-safe residential development play in Manhattan. No one relishes dealing with the awkwardness of kitchenside maids’ rooms pre remodeling job or blue hairs on a co-op board. Nor is townhouse living for everyone. Ditto industrial chic—a painfully played out trend if we ever saw one. Especially not those who have spent eight of their formative years living in the uber-traditional White House. Read More

By Kim Velsey 11/27/12 5:22pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

Time to move on.

You Can’t Go Home Again: Homeland Star Claire Danes Ditches Soho Loft

There comes a time in every former starlet’s life when she realizes that she has outgrown her Soho loft and needs to move on. For Claire Danes, this realization apparently hit when she found out she was pregnant with her first child.

Ms. Danes, who owns a 3,851-square-foot condo at 42 Wooster Street, which she purchased as “A. Kulik” back in 1998, has sold the space for $5.85 million, reports The New York Post. Read More

By Kim Velsey 11/20/12 1:46pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

6 Photos

Madonna's selling her CPW duplex

Just Like a Prayer, Madonna’s Central Park West Duplex Will Take You There for $23.5 M.

Madonna has gone through so many reinventions and costume changes over her career that it’s actually quite shocking to learn that she’s stuck with the same piece of scenery at 41 Central Park West since the early 1990s.

Now, the pop megastar is finally selling, reports The New York Post. That is, if she can find a buyer willing to pay $23.5 million for her 6,000-square-foot spread at Harperly Hall. Central Park West is a desirable address, to be sure, but Harperly Hall is not the San Remo, the Beresford, the Dakota or even the Majestic. And the building’s biggest asset is moving out—her presence was said to have added 25 percent to the value of other units in the building. Read More

By Kim Velsey 11/16/12 4:06pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

Wainwright's tiny bedroom. (The New York Times)

Rufus Wainwright Has a Small, Dark Apartment, Just Like a Real Bohemian

Celebrities—they’re just like us! Okay, not really, but some small aspects of their lives are kind of like some small aspects of our lives, even if these small, overlapping aspects of our lives do not usually involve real estate. Unless, of course, it’s the squalid apartment that the celebrity lived before he or she was a celebrity, like William Shatner’s old, ramshackle house in Hastings-on-Hudson. Mostly, these reminiscences have a strong undertone of “can you believe that someone like me lived in someplace like this?”

And we look around at our own sad, squalid apartments and ask ourselves the same question, but we know the answer to that question which is that no one is surprised you live in a place like this and probably never will be. Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/05/12 3:20pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

Maybe the house in Hastings-on-Hudson was inspiration for Mr. Shatner's lyrical masterpiece "I can't get behind that?"

In the First Issue of The Journal’s Mansion Section, William Shatner Reminisces on His Old House

Finally, a celebrity house that doesn’t fill us with feelings of longing and sadness! And it’s written about in The Wall Street Journal, that organ of the upper classes. What gives?

No, this is not a new turn for the paper that brought you that video segment on whether or not rich people should buy yachts. Nor is a paean to Bloomberg’s plan to bring micro apartments to Manhattan. It’s William Shatner, remembering fondly the shithole he lived in back in the late 1950s. Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/02/12 4:18pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

8 Photos

Stewart's Park Slope Spread

See Patrick Stewart’s Park Slope Starship

It’s no Enterprise-D, but Patrick Stewart’s new digs in Park Slope are definitely swanky. The Captain was rumored by Brownstoner to have moved to the neighborhood back in August, but the website stayed traditionally tight-lipped on further details. Now Curbed has unearthed the actual sale and the address, revealing that Mr. Stewart paid $2.5 million for a three-bedroom condo at 288 Seventh Street. Read More