Still, the central staircase, faced in warm marble, has to be one of the finest in the city, reason enough to put the place back on the market, as Mr. Rosen did in 2008. The blushing price was $75 million, the most anyone dared to ask for a home at the time. And there it has sat ever since. Though the place, now asking a mere $50 million, has been far from quiet.

In the intervening years, it has become a boîte of sorts, like so many of Mr. Rosen’s properties--he’s put the house party in Lever House--host to galas, fundraisers, after parties, product launches and, as was the case last night, art shows.

Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, the society fixture, was hosting an opening for Nicholas Pol's Neverlodge—not a bad name for the mansion, either. Even if the art was not all that great, various splatters of paint with clever names (Goat After An Orgasm was one, and not entirely inaccurate) and unusual sculptures of cobbled together ephemera, it all served as a pleasant reminder that townhouses are still lovely, intimate places to show art.

Too bad they command so much more as homes and have thus have become an endangered species uptown.

The Observer caught up with Mr. Rosen just as he was leaving. Before we got a chance to say hi, another guest beat us to the big man. He looked like Mr. Rosen's fellow friend and art dealer Alberto Mugrabi, though it was hard to tell in the faint street light. In the course of the conversation, we overheard the Maybe Mr. Mugrabi remark, "You know, I've talked to two or three people tonight who really want to buy the place."

"Oh yeah?" Mr. Rosen shot back. "I've spoken to more than three. It's great. Everyone wants to buy the place, nobody wants to pay for it."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

“Man,” said Alberto Mugrabi as he approached Aby Rosen. “This came out great, huh?”
Mr. Rosen nodded and gestured at a collection of nude men in crucified positions on the wall. “Lots of dicks,” he said.

It was Thursday and the two were feting a collection of work by David LaChapelle. Lever House was packed with swarms of people who, for whatever reason, weren’t at the Venice Biennale. The bar was so crowded even Mr. Rosen couldn’t get a drink.

“Transvestites should always be around,” Mr. Mugrabi continued. “Warhol was a great fan of the drag queens and it’s great to see them back ‘in.’”

Among the guests was Amanda Lepore, a favorite subject and friend of Mr. La Chapelle’s. Ms. Lepore recounted a Courtney Love shoot. “I remember they made her up, like, so beautiful, she was sort of like Madonna.” she said. “She was four hours late, and she wanted a boatload of glitter and she passed out in the glitter like this”—Ms. Leopore threw her arms out and fell forward into an invisible pile of glitter—“and the makeup artists were going out of their minds.”

As for the art itself, it was meager. A raft-themed collage greeted visitors at the entrance, there were the aforementioned male anatomy pics, and kindergartenlike paper chains of nude bodies hung from the ceiling. That was mostly it. In aviators and shorts, the gallery owner and Work of Art judge Bill Powers decided to “go crazy with the deconstructionist readings,” as he put it.

“I think this raft is based on Raft of the Medusa, right?” he said. “So if you think of that as Raft of the Medusa, you could almost think of that”—the chains—“as netting.”

He let the sentence hang. And then shrugged. The penises were self-evident. —Dan Duray