By Kim Velsey 8/13/12 8:00pm

Red Carpet Real Estate

The Browns at home.

What Will Become Of Helen Gurley Brown’s Beloved Beresford Tower Penthouse?

When Helen Gurley Brown died this Monday, she left behind a legacy of sexual liberation, generations of bereaved Cosmopolitan fans and a four-floor penthouse in one of the Beresford’s Southwest towers.

The fate of the tower apartment, which Brown and husband David Brown bought in the 1970s from director Mike Nichols, remains unknown. But its high place in Brown’s affections was no secret—it ranked right up there with sex, ambition and her husband. When asked by Vanity Fair where she would most like to live, Brown replied:

“Exactly where I am living—the Beresford Apartments, on Central Park West and 81st Street. We have the top four floors of a tower apartment. I’m slightly prejudiced, but I think it’s the best apartment in New York.” Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 1/30/12 1:06pm

Higher Ed

January30

Helen Gurley Brown Donates $30 M. to Columbia and Stanford for Bicoastal Media-Tech Institute

With the help of a $30 M. gift from longtime Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University’s School of Engineering have established the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the two universities and the Hearst Corporation announced today.

The Institute is inspired by David Brown, Ms. Brown’s late husband, a former journalist, publisher, film and theater producer who graduated from both Stanford and Columbia Journalism School. Read More

By John H. Summers 6/19/06 12:00am

Politics Without Politics: Seeing History From the Center

Richard Hofstadter spent most his adult life in the “Upper West Side Kibbutz,” an area of Morningside Heights bounded by Claremont Avenue, Riverside Drive and Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. Of the eminences who inhabited this neighborhood in the 1950’s—Daniel Bell, Peter Gay, Irving Kristol, Lionel Trilling—Hofstadter achieved the most impressive mix of critical and commercial success. Read More