It seems, however, that someone got a little sour at having been excluded from the cool kids' party. Media Decoder informed us that Fox News' Greta Van Susteren took to her blog yesterday with a mini-rant about the party, just the latest example of the glitz and excesses that she feels defines the elitism of CNN. Fox, she insists, would never waste money on such frivolity. A fancy-schmancy UES shindig? When there are viewers in the heartland who need to get their fair and balanced news? Shame, CNN, shame.

It is so different over here at Fox than CNN.  I can't imagine Fox News Channel or friend of Fox News Channel having some fancy "launch party" at a fancy NYC upper east side address with a bunch of celebrities for a new cable news show.  It seems so out of touch with the rest of the country, doesn't it?

At Fox we just get hired and go to work (and we are very glad to have our jobs!)  We can celebrate later (and we have.)Maybe I am wrong, but since I have been here (9 years this month), I can recall no fancy launch parties for Fox News Channel programs or anchors.  Of course we also have not changed our prime time programming in 9 years.

But hold on Greta -- it seems even the down-home paragons of ethic at Fox News kick up their Louboutins and indulge in some good old fashioned excess. Media Decoder reminds of of the swanky little event Rupert Murdoch threw for the launch of Fox Business. Where was this party you ask? Well, it was held at the Temple of Dendur. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Which is on the Upper East Side. What would your fans in Kansas think, Greta!?

Apart from the fact that the Counting Crows played, this appears to have been a pretty swanky event. Not that The Boss had much to do with the music choice, as a classic Gawker party report reveals:

Adam Duritz began to sing the first unbearably crap lines of Long December. Was that Lauren Bush singing along softly? I tapped Rupert's shoulder.

He's shorter than I'd expect. He's also very powerful. I thought the best approach was informal. I gave him a pound. (Kidding.) Instead he enveloped my hand in his own soft hands and shook up and down. He feels like a cashmere doll. He had never heard of the Counting Crows. But he thought they were okay.

Click for What Twitter Taught Us: Piers Morgan Defends A Cell-Abusing Arianna

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

It was after 11 p.m. on Saturday, May 1, in the foyer of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the incongruous combo of the chef Bobby Flay and CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer were co-hosting a Capitol File after-party for the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. Mr. West was standing right where Kim Kardashian had fought her way through a clamoring mob a few minutes earlier, while her escort, Greta Van Susteren, played the patient handmaiden.

"This isn't about politics," said Hardball host Chris Matthews. "It's about the scene. Wherever you have a lot of people together at an event like this, good-looking people show up. And they just stand around. So you'll notice groups of good-looking people just standing around because they've heard there's a scene. And since they make it on looks, they must be seen."

All the pretty faces made the party planners nervous. Press people asked reporters not to bother the guests inside. Security was tight: Lists were dutifully double-checked; IDs were required.

In the ballroom, Mr. West sauntered along behind two of his co-stars-Michael K. Williams (the scar-faced bandit Omar) and Sonja Sohn (Kima, the tough lesbian cop)-who were holding hands (unromantically) and making a beeline for a back staircase, where a beefy security guard protected the entrance to a VIP balcony.

Mr. Williams whispered in the guard's ear, but nothing happened. The group stepped aside while others were let up. Mr. Williams patted his brow with a cloth, and tried again. Ms. Sohn sat down on a ledge.

Desiree Rogers-the former social secretary blamed for letting the infamous gatecrashers past White House security-floated down the stairs in a red dress, followed by a waiter with a big tray.

Mr. Williams tried again, but the security guard was unmoved, and the group finally trudged off. (They would go on to surface at the glitzier Vanity Fair party later in the night.)

Mr. Buchanan was zeroing in on John McLaughlin's annual Sunday brunch. The place you traditionally go after the weekend of frenzied socializing to see and be seen one last time and to wash down your ibuprofen with eggs and Champagne in good political company.

Mr. Buchanan walked into Teatro Goldoni, a nouveau Italian restaurant facing K Street, and surveyed the room. He was early and the place was mostly empty. Historically, Mr. McLaughin, the blustery dean of Sunday morning political roughhousing, has held the affair on the roof of the Hay-Adams hotel looking down on the White House. But this being 2009, things had been scaled down a bit.

A few minutes later, Mr. Buchanan stood in a corner, alongside his wife, who was chitchatting with Wendy Diamond, a New Yorker, who writes about pets for a living. (Manhattan life, huh?) Ms. Buchanan was wearing a shiny brooch, in the shape of a cat, on her lapel. The conversation turned to the subject of a late beloved kitty of the Buchanan household.

Mr. Buchanan launched into a reminiscence about those heady days of the early '80s, when a young Ronald Reagan took hold of the presidency and a young kitten wandered into their lives. After one particularly promising day on Capitol Hill, Mr. Buchanan, had arrived home and joyfully named their new pet after the president.

Gipper, he said, had been one hell of a cat.

A woman in a flamboyant Sunday hat charged across the room. "Hello, everybody," she said. "Thank you for coming."

Cristina Vidal McLaughlin, second wife to John, introduced herself and said hello. What parties had people gone to the night before? Ms. Diamond said that the Bloomberg-Vanity Fair after-party at the French Embassy had been amazing. Much nicer than last year's shindig at the Costa Rican embassy. Remember the leaky roof?

Ms. McLaughlin asked if anyone had ever been to Costa Rica, which, by the way, doesn't even have an army. She said that before meeting John, whom she referred to as "my shining knight," she had grown up in the Dominican Republic, which did have an army. Though sometimes she wondered why.

All of which got her started on a roundabout story, the payoff of which involved an American military gentleman, a West Point graduate, speaking insensitively about America's involvement in the Dominican Civil War of 1965. That war, Ms. McLaughlin noted, had taken the lives of some of her countrymen, her people.

"Well, not too many people died," offered Mr. Buchanan.

As it happened, he knew a thing or two about the Dominican Civil War, too. At the time of the skirmish, he said, he had been living in Washington writing editorials. L.B.J. couldn't just sit back and let another Cuba emerge in our backyard, he explained.

"Ah, the days of the empire," said Mr. Buchanan, mock wistfully.

Ms. McLaughlin frowned.

"We were protecting you from Castro!" said Mr. Buchanan playfully.

More frowning.

"Maybe I shouldn't have gone there," Mr. Buchanan said sideways to The Observer.

It was time for somebody to change the subject. Ms. Buchanan noted that John McLaughlin himself had once done some cat-sitting for the Gipper.

Some twenty-four hours earlier, the marathon round of D.C. kibitzing, that sometimes awkward mix of the professional and the personal, had kicked off at Tammy Haddad's annual garden brunch, in the verdant backyard of her home in upper northwest. In anticipation of an Obama-induced boom year, the party was outfitted with a red carpet for paparazzi on a patch of grass overlooking the driveway.

Here and there, under a steamy tent, actors stood alongside journalists and politicos: Val Kilmer, Janet Napolitano, Jake Tapper, Christian Slater, Ed Henry, Chace Crawford, Ed Schultz, David Gregory, and on and on. The Observer bumped into Bill Wolff of MSNBC.

Where was Rachel Maddow? She was skipping out on the dinner this year, said Mr. Wolff, to go to a Red Sox game and to enjoy a walking tour of gangster Whitey Bulger's old haunts in Boston. Nearby, a gossip columnist marveled at Luke Russert's outfit: Salmon shorts, loafers and a baby-blue-and-white-striped jacket. Very St. Albans Goes to Nantucket.

NBC's Ann Curry took a microphone and tried to get the crowd interested in some humanitarian causes. She was met with little response. Eventually, Ms. Haddad implored the crowd to hold up their blackberry's in the air. "Or iPhones" said Ms. Haddad. "I'm not prejudiced." Ms. Curry then proceeded to choreograph a simultaneous Mother's Day tweet. People kept drinking.

That evening, after a nap, the same crowd (plus many, many more) reemerged in formal attire at the Washington Hilton, where spirits were flowing freely at an slate of pre-dinner cocktail parties. Much to everyone's horror, the lovely, open-aired back patio was under construction, forcing the partygoers into the warren of drab, windowless rooms in the basement of the building.

Pretty soon, the hallway between the Newsweek and ABC News parties had turned into a mosh pit of power brokers and their sweaty handlers. Michael Bloomberg, Jon Bon Jovi, Chris Wallace, Natalie Portman, Stevie Wonder, Richard Belzer, Adrian Fenty, Barbara Walters—everyone jostling and elbowing for a chance to find some place to rest and have a civil conversation. There was none.

Dinner time!

Spare tickets, for the first time in recent years, were few and far between. Those who couldn't get past security to hear President Obama and Wanda Sykes left to drown their lack of importance in more cocktails elsewhere.

When dinner finally let out, it was time for the Niche Media Capitol File's after-party at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A conga line of celebrities—Padma Lakshmi, Forest Whitaker, Dulé Hill, Valerie Jarrett, the Prince of Qatar, David Cross and Rachel Leigh Cook—filed into the Beaux-Arts building, its ornate interior bathed in pink lights and pulsating with hip-hop.

Fresh-faced junior staffers in short skirts stood in clusters gazing around, keeping an eye out for the celebrities. Fox News' Greta Van Susteren and her husband, lawyer John Coale, chaperoned Alaskan "first dude" Todd Palin for a lap around the party. No, they weren't interested in doing interviews, thank you very much. Nearby, the actor Tim Daly ran into Friday Night Lights' hot mom Connie Britton by the bar, where they embraced. Meghan McCain, in a form-fitting white gown, and her entourage cut a path through the party.

On the second floor, partygoers slurped mixed drinks and gazed down at all the young flesh, beginning to bump and shake on the dance floor. Slate's Mickey Kaus, in from Los Angeles, wondered if people in D.C. actually enjoyed dance music. Could everyone be faking it? A young attractive woman with editorial ambitions and a low-cut dress moved in for a frontal barrage of flattery. She recognized Mr. Kaus, she said, from Bloggingheads.tv.

There was an eruption of excitement on the dance floor below. Rahm Emmanuel was in the house. Well-wishers scrambled for a closer look.

Across town, the voltage was perking up at the Vanity Fair-Bloomberg party, which was precisely the small, intimate affair it promised to be. It took place in a mansion that belongs to the French ambassador, but easily could have been mistaken for the house in Eyes Wide Shut. It was one of those specifically D.C. nights where David Axelrod or Mother Jones' David Corn were in a conversation every time you looked up, but a star like Owen Wilson was left to his lonesome by the bar, and The Office's B.J. Novak, who has become a regular at any event in D.C. for the last year, was wandering aimlessly at several points throughout the night.

Meanwhile, others found ways to pass the time.

"He needs to figure it out, he needs to figure it out because he's a man, he's a fucking man," said an insistent Jonathan Rhys-Myers while waiting for a chance to use the bathroom. Within a few moments, he gave up on that bit of conversation and went off to give the coat-check girl a kiss, one of two women he was spotted smooching.

It was impossible to walk into a room or out onto the terrace and not see someone: Justice Antonin Scalia, James Franco, Donald Rumsfeld, Graydon Carter, Michael Bloomberg, Andrea Mitchell, David Carr, Ludacris, Jason Wu, Lally and Katharine Weymouth and editors Marcus Brauchli, James Bennet, and Rick Stengel.

But unlike last year's Bloomberg party, which was hot well past 3 a.m., this one died down at least an hour or two earlier. Two images that capped the night nicely: Valerie Jarrett and Desiree Rogers splayed on a couch, legs extended after a long day's journey into this nightcap; and VF spokeswoman Beth Kseniak with her friend Katie Couric sitting on another couch on the other side of the house, the AC blowing their hair up.

On Sunday morning, back at the McLaughlin brunch, the weekend came to a merciful end.

MSNBC contributor and former West Wing producer Lawrence O'Donnell chatted with Mort Zuckerman, the publisher of the New York Daily News. Mr. O'Donnell was looking L.A. chic—untucked shirt, lace-less Vans sneakers. A bleary-eyed photographer sized up the twosome. "If he can't bother to tuck in his shirt, I can't bother to tell him to," said the shutterbug, and snapped the picture.

Mr. McLaughlin's orthopaedic surgeon, stood nearby, nursing a drink.

Shortly after noon, the omnipresent Mr. Corn, of Mother Jones, shook hands with the host, and excused himself to go watch his kid's soccer game. The Observer swooped in and asked the host for his impressions of the weekend. Mr. McLaughlin, always fond of scores and grades and scales, said that compared to past presidents, Mr. Obama's speech the night before scored around an 85 percent.

"I thought he was relaxed and in relatively good form," said Mr. McLaughlin. "But he could have improved on his command of the material."

So why no Hay-Adams, this year?

"We were drifting around," said Mr. McLaughlin. "And there was the economic ..." He paused. "And the appearance associated with what could be seen as an indulgence. We thought we ought to be able to work out something in between."

And with that, his young, energetic wife materialized, grabbed him by the forearm, and physically pulled him in the direction of another conversation.

On GretaWire today, Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News anchor and profilic blogger, invited readers to write in about their dream jobs. Ms. Van Susteren kicked things off by admitting that she sometimes dreams of running an online news site.

From the post:

"The sniping at Gov. Palin after the election by 'anonymous' sources is rotten,” Ms. Van Susteren wrote on her blog this morning. "I have said over and over and over again, it is our job in journalism to be aggressive in challenging politicians…but it is not right to gratuitously trash someone."

Mr. Griffin was there for an interview. He had landed in Wasilla, Alaska, three days earlier, fresh off the Hurricane Gustav story, and was now charged with reporting on the life of the charismatic Alaska governor for a CNN documentary to be called Sarah Palin Revealed. There, alongside the driveway of Alaska’s first dad, Mr. Griffin saw something he’d never seen before: A 15-foot tower of stacked moose antlers. Holy Alaska!

Ms. Palin’s father turned out to be a gracious host (offering his guests caribou sausage) and entertaining interview subject. Eventually, the former science teacher and track coach took Mr. Griffin on a tour. At one point, they stood gazing at the found-antler installation in the yard as Mr. Heath explained how you differentiate between antlers from a moose killed by wolves versus antlers from a moose killed by an avalanche. “It was like being on a tour of a natural history museum,” Mr. Griffin recently recalled to The Observer.

The hourlong documentary about Ms. Palin’s life debuted on CNN on the night of Saturday, Sept. 13, along with Joe Biden Revealed, about the life of the Democrat’s vice presidential candidate. Ultimately both documentaries put up big numbers for CNN on Saturday night. But according to Mark Nelson, CNN’s documentary chief, it was Mr. McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin as his running mate that had thrown the twin biographies into fast-forward production.

“Details are everything,” Mr. Nelson said. In the end, the Palin pic was rich with them. There was footage of Ms. Palin’s high-school basketball heroics; interviews with her friends at a gun range; chilling voice-overs (“Sarah bagged her first rabbit at age 10”); a candid interview with one of Ms. Palin’s vanquished political rivals in Wasilla; a sit-down interview with the bad-boy ex-brother-in-law at the heart of the so-called Trooper Gate scandal; and a memorable shot of a crib resting near the governor’s desk.

Somewhere along the way, the leaning tower of moose antlers lost out in the avalanche of vivid imagery. “There was no shortage of color,” said Mr. Griffin.

That’s an understatement. Typically, the translation of politics onto television is visually pedestrian. (1) Buy table. (2) Hire talking heads. If you happen to come across anything vaguely resembling outsider antler art, you use it. After all, the lives of politicians—from the backroom deal-making to the vetting of candidates to the tending of constituent services—do not always make for the most aesthetically riveting TV.

Since the dawn of television, however, some campaigns have done vastly better than others at mastering the all-important art of creating entertaining small-screen versions of their candidates. For much of this year, Senator Barack Obama has played the game at a high level, seen alternately energizing stadium crowds and burying three-pointers on the basketball court. His opponent Senator John McCain, on the other hand, has struggled, rivaling at times Michael Dukakis’ ill-fated tank-and-helmet moment for imagery ineptitude (see, Mr. McCain and George H. W. Bush in a golf cart in Kennebunkport).

But to judge by her first two weeks on the national stage, Ms. Palin’s TV-ready story line trumps all. Her clan of snowmobile-straddling kinfolk seem straight from central casting—their lives an aesthetic mix that is one part National Geographic, one part Hallmark Channel and one part those ads you see during football season, in which crews of hard-hat wearing dudes test their pickup trucks with over-the-top experiments carried out on the edges of cliffs.

Michael Rovito, a reporter with the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, has watched downtown Wasilla turn into a scene straight out of State and Main in recent weeks. Camera crews from all over the world—France and Italy, Norway and Spain—have reportedly descended on the town. Mr. Rovito watched Ms. Palin’s big coming-out speech at the Republican National Convention from Tailgaters, a bar in downtown Wasilla. “There were almost as many cameras there as people,” Mr. Rovito told the Observer.

On the morning of Sept. 14, during a Sunday morning Palin-palooza, George Will sized up the made-for-TV story line thusly: “We had the tech bubble. The housing bubble. Now we have the Palin bubble. Sooner or later bubbles do what bubbles do. But not yet. This is still going strong.” And for the time being, it remains a seller’s market. (A few days after Mr. Will’s assessment, CBS News announced that Katie Couric had landed the second broadcast-news interview with the in-demand governor.).

Barracuda Week on American television unofficially kicked off on Thursday, Sept. 11, when Charlie Gibson of ABC News interviewed Ms. Palin against a range of backdrops—in a hotel ballroom, alongside an oil pipeline, in her living room in Wasilla overlooking a scenic inlet and at the gym that holds her high-school basketball trophies.

The interviews were sober and probing and conducted in a hard-nosed manner. But whatever missteps Ms. Palin made along the way (“In what respect, Charlie?”) were softened by the unspoken power of the setting. Trees, mountains, a woman in power.

Jon Banner, the executive producer of ABC’s World News, who made the trip to Alaska along with Mr. Gibson, said the specific settings for the interviews were the result of a collaborative effort.

“We had to find a place on Thursday that was close enough to the deployment ceremony for her son, but wasn’t on the military base,” said Mr. Banner. “We used a hotel ballroom. We wanted to ask her about energy and the environment. We went to the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline for that. On Friday, she had to go home. We ended up in her living room. That was something they had offered and we took advantage of, not knowing any other place in Wasilla.

“Our desire was to be substantive and do as much as we could to educate the audience and to leave it at that,” added Mr. Banner.

There were no preconditions for the big interview, he said, except for its general location. “The only stipulation was that we had to go to Alaska,” said Mr. Banner.

On Wednesday, Sept. 17, Ms. Palin is scheduled to sit down with Sean Hannity of Fox News for her second post-convention interview. The apparent backdrop: an area of Ohio, hit hard by Hurricane Ike. In case viewers missed the subtext—here’s a powerful woman who can grapple with Mother Nature!—Ms. Palin will also appear in a one-on-one interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo later this month in a documentary called, “The Hunt for Black Gold,” in part about mankind’s quest for oil in the rugged wilds of places like Alaska’s North Slope (where Ms. Palin’s husband works for most of the year).

Perhaps mindful of the fact that journalist-bashing is currently in vogue, television news producers to date have been laboring to inject their pieces on Ms. Palin with serious analysis of her track record as a politician and her beliefs on a range of serious issues, from energy policy to national security to abortion. Mr. Gibson’s multipart exclusive with Ms. Palin was a study in sober journalism. And, in addition to all the memorable imagery, the CNN documentary was filled with plenty of small-bore analysis of Ms. Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla.

Recently, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News spent a week, hosting her show On the Record, from Alaska. Along the way, she scored the first on-air, post-convention interview with Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, the so-called “first dude” of Alaska.

Therein, Ms. Van Susteren, in a blue North Face vest and jeans, strolled around the Palins’ property talking to Mr. Palin, dressed in a polar fleece and jeans. They discussed romance, sockeye fishing, hockey, cold weather and the pleasures of caribou versus moose meat. As they walked, they passed in front of a boat, several pickup trucks, multiple ATVs, a pair of snowmobiles, a golf cart and a single-engine seaplane.

Mr. Palin, in his laconic way, told Ms. Van Susteren: “Americans, I think, are seeing what she’s about.”

fgillette@observer.com

Mr. Kurtz called twittering "the digital equivalent of a sound bite, a throat-clearing, a terse observation or two for a cloistered community online."

If you're hoping to hear Fox News' Greta Van Susteren clear her throat online, you're out of luck: The On the Record host tells The Huffington Post's Danny Shea that Twittering may not be for her:

"I like the blogging," she said as she clicked away at her keyboard, posting updates to GretaWire. Her counterparts were all doing the more predictable TV thing: Chris Wallace had a live shot for the nes channel, and downstairs Bill Hemmer was digging away at a late breakfast-bar buffet. At the coffee and soda bar Brit Hume shot the shit with Brian Kilmeade. Nobody was playing the Big Buck Hunter video game nearby; after all, this is a television studio, not a bar.

But Ms. Van Susteren was glued to her computer, finishing up her 10th blog post of the morning, including an online poll: "What do you think Michelle Obama thinks about Hillary Clinton?" (As of press time, 80 percent of 990 voters had responded, "Hates her.")

Lanny Davis got up from a nearby seat and Ms. Van Susteren slumped into it shortly after and took a moment to tell us what's wrong with conventions these days.

"There is no intrigue," she said. "But the networks can't not be here, which is a problem. Not a terrific amount of news is going to happen. We have to be here in case something does happen. It's the same reason we send reporters down to Crawford to sit there during the president's vacation. In case something does happen."

The only other thing to do is try to have fun. By early afternoon, she had written about McCain surrogates in Denver, linked to an item about an Italian Priest who was organizing an on-line beauty contest for nuns, posted an description by a Fox News colleague of Joe Biden's first public appearance in Denver, and downloaded some photos of her recent trip to North Korea.

"Here's the problem with TV," said Ms. Susteren. "With TV you're talking at someone. You're talking at the camera. It's pretty weird. With blogging I get the give and take. I get to have conversations back and forth. I get to go behind the scenes and show people things that they haven't seen by just turning on the TV. I don't even mind the comments on the blog that say, I'm a moron, I'm an idiot. I'm stupid. So what? I've been called worse."

The host of Fox’s On the Record and her husband, a D.C. lawyer, dropped $2.57 million for a 1,582-square-foot apartment on the site of the former Studebaker Building on Broadway at 48th Street after selling their Central Park South condo this summer.

The old place, they said, was cramped; their new one has two bedrooms and a private terrace.

“The problem with that place is that we had no windows,” Mr. Coale said of their old Essex House digs. While their new condo, at 1600 Broadway, offers all the Blade Runner glory of Times Square, he said, the Essex apartment’s view opened up “into the back of another building.”

“You look out and you see Times Square!” said Ms. Van Susteren. “What can I say, how can you not love Times Square?”

“Each wall, almost, is glass,” Mr. Coale said. “So we have, I don’t know, three sides [of] views. We’re getting curtains because it’s like daylight at night.

“And you would think there’s so much noise,” said Mr. Coale.

You certainly would. There isn’t?

“It’s soundproofed,” Mr. Coale explained.

The building, between 48th and 49th streets, was once the 10-story Studebaker Building, built in 1902. It was demolished at the end of 2004, then rebuilt as a 27-story luxury tower complete with a landscaped roof garden with trees and a putting green.

According to Fred Rosenberg, senior vice president of Sherwood Equities, its 137 units have all been sold.

Ms. Van Susteren and Mr. Coale make their primary home in Washington, D.C., where Mr. Coale’s practice is based and where Ms. Van Susteren films her show.

The couple also has a condominium in Clearwater, Fla. And then there’s the Old Mill Inn in Mattituck, Long Island, which Ms. Van Susteren and former Ms. editor Elaine Lafferty bought earlier this year.

So, now that they’ve bought a glass-walled penthouse, will the couple spend more time in New York? “I hope to be up a lot, except when it’s 100 degrees,” Mr. Coale said. “I love the place.”

He will occasionally travel to and fro on the couple’s 80-foot 1947 Trumpy yacht.

As for Ms. Van Susteren:

“I’d like to spend time enjoying New York more, I just don’t get the chance to. I’ve been saying that for ever.”

George Stephanopoulos’ Folks Get Awesome New Pad

The Rev. Dr. Robert Stephanopoulos, a leader of the country’s Greek Orthodox community, has bought a $1.08 million co-op at 399 East 72nd Street.

For now, he and his wife Nikki will stay at their rectory apartment next door to the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, where he is dean.

“We’re only moving a couple of blocks!” said Ms. Stephanopoulos, who works on news and communications for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. The Cathedral and rectory are on 74th Street.

“It’s an apartment that we decided it was time to buy,” said her husband. “The time will be coming for full retirement, so we have to think ahead.”

The couple’s son is the former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, who is now ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, and host of the Sunday show This Week. His wife, comedienne Alexandra “Dabs” Wentworth, also has interesting roots: Her mother is Muffie Brandon Cabot, the social secretary to Nancy Reagan.

Until they move in, the Stephanopoulos’ daughter will live in their co-op. “This worked out very well,” said Ms. Stephanopoulos. “She’s renting there—it’s very nice. When the time comes, she’ll move on.”

How will the couple feel about relocating to a co-op from their rectory home—where they’ve lived since its 1987 construction? “We’re very excited. We’ll certainly stay in the neighborhood, as we’ve always wanted to,” the reverend said.

He and his wife have slowly begun to consider retired life. “Is it going to be Florida? Or Minnesota?” she said. “This is where we spend our time, where it is most convenient for our children. New York is where we want to be.”

On West Side, Landmark Neo-Georgian Goes For $9 M.

The landmark neo-Georgian townhouse at 22 West 74th Street, the 42-year home of the Stephen Gaynor School, has been sold for $9.1 million.

“It was a wild sale,” said Corcoran senior vice president Anne Snee, the firm’s director of townhouse sales. “Brown Harris Stevens had the exclusive, but I brought the buyer. I came in at the last minute, put together a contract in one day, and we signed in the lobby of the school head’s co-op apartment at night. We knocked out several other people.”

Ileen Schoenfeld and Dorothy Arnsten, the Brown Harris Stevens brokers who listed the townhouse, are both on vacation.

“It’s a beauty,” head of school Scott Gaynor said about the townhouse. His program works with students who don’t meet their academic potential, “which can fall under the criteria of learning disabled—or special education.”

The townhouse is one of 18 mansions built by the Clark family, developers of the Dakota. “In an ideal world it would have been nice if a school moved in,” Mr. Gaynor said. “But a 10,000-square-foot brownstone is out of reach of most educational programs.”

Ms. Snee said the buyers, a hedge-fund manager and his wife, asked not to be named. According to city records, the couple sold their co-op at 44 West 77th Street last month for $4.4 million.

This fall the school will move to its new 37,000-square-foot building at 148 West 90th Street.

Because of that construction, Ms. Snee said, the contract for the 74th Street townhouse took 16 months to close. And it will be another year before the neo-Georgian mansion transforms from a school for 120 students into a single-family home.

“It has to be ripped to smithereens,” she said. “It’s going to be wonderful. Wonderful!”

Siemens Chief Sells At Belvedere For $3.97 M.

Albert Hoser, the founder and chairman emeritus of the Siemens Foundation, has sold his penthouse at the Park Belvedere for $3.97 million.

Mr. Hoser, now retired, and his wife Doris will be heading to Florida and also plan to spend time in Germany. But they said they’re sad to be leaving New York.

“[It] hurts like hell,” said Ms. Hoser.

“We have all four views here,” Mr. Hoser added. “We see the Hudson, of course, directly in front of us, and Central Park on the other side. So that is very nice, very beautiful.”

“I sit on my terrace at night,” Ms. Hoser said. “Sometimes I felt like the warden of the West Side.”

They’ve got a while to get used to the idea. Though the deal closed in June, they won’t be moving out until this fall, after Ms. Hoser has run her 10th New York Marathon.

Mr. Hoser served as the chief executive of the Siemens Corporation from 1991 to 1999. He left to helm the nonprofit Siemens Foundation, which now runs the high-school science competition previously known as Westinghouse.

The couple moved to New York in 1991.

“At that point,” Ms. Hoser said, “the West Side wasn’t quite ‘in.’”

Really?

The seven-room penthouse at 101 West 79th was sold without a broker. Though Mr. Hoser described the buyer as a company “we’ve known for quite a while,” he wouldn’t identify it.

“I am 72,” Mr. Hoser said. “For me, it was finally time to retire.”

The host of Fox’s On the Record and her husband, a D.C. lawyer, dropped $2.57 million for a 1,582-square-foot apartment on the site of the former Studebaker Building on Broadway at 48th Street after selling their Central Park South condo this summer.

The old place, they said, was cramped; their new one has two bedrooms and a private terrace.

“The problem with that place is that we had no windows,” Mr. Coale said of their old Essex House digs. While their new condo, at 1600 Broadway, offers all the Blade Runner glory of Times Square, he said, the Essex apartment’s view opened up “into the back of another building.”

“You look out and you see Times Square!” said Ms. Van Susteren. “What can I say, how can you not love Times Square?”

“Each wall, almost, is glass,” Mr. Coale said. “So we have, I don’t know, three sides [of] views. We’re getting curtains because it’s like daylight at night.

“And you would think there’s so much noise,” said Mr. Coale.

You certainly would. There isn’t?

“It’s soundproofed,” Mr. Coale explained.

The building, between 48th and 49th streets, was once the 10-story Studebaker Building, built in 1902. It was demolished at the end of 2004, then rebuilt as a 27-story luxury tower complete with a landscaped roof garden with trees and a putting green.

According to Fred Rosenberg, senior vice president of Sherwood Equities, its 137 units have all been sold.

Ms. Van Susteren and Mr. Coale make their primary home in Washington, D.C., where Mr. Coale’s practice is based and where Ms. Van Susteren films her show.

The couple also has a condominium in Clearwater, Fla. And then there’s the Old Mill Inn in Mattituck, Long Island, which Ms. Van Susteren and former Ms. editor Elaine Lafferty bought earlier this year.

So, now that they’ve bought a glass-walled penthouse, will the couple spend more time in New York? “I hope to be up a lot, except when it’s 100 degrees,” Mr. Coale said. “I love the place.”

He will occasionally travel to and fro on the couple’s 80-foot 1947 Trumpy yacht.

As for Ms. Van Susteren:

“I’d like to spend time enjoying New York more, I just don’t get the chance to. I’ve been saying that for ever.”

George Stephanopoulos’ Folks Get Awesome New Pad

The Rev. Dr. Robert Stephanopoulos, a leader of the country’s Greek Orthodox community, has bought a $1.08 million co-op at 399 East 72nd Street.

For now, he and his wife Nikki will stay at their rectory apartment next door to the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, where he is dean.

“We’re only moving a couple of blocks!” said Ms. Stephanopoulos, who works on news and communications for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. The Cathedral and rectory are on 74th Street.

“It’s an apartment that we decided it was time to buy,” said her husband. “The time will be coming for full retirement, so we have to think ahead.”

The couple’s son is the former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, who is now ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, and host of the Sunday show This Week. His wife, comedienne Alexandra “Dabs” Wentworth, also has interesting roots: Her mother is Muffie Brandon Cabot, the social secretary to Nancy Reagan.

Until they move in, the Stephanopoulos’ daughter will live in their co-op. “This worked out very well,” said Ms. Stephanopoulos. “She’s renting there—it’s very nice. When the time comes, she’ll move on.”

How will the couple feel about relocating to a co-op from their rectory home—where they’ve lived since its 1987 construction? “We’re very excited. We’ll certainly stay in the neighborhood, as we’ve always wanted to,” the reverend said.

He and his wife have slowly begun to consider retired life. “Is it going to be Florida? Or Minnesota?” she said. “This is where we spend our time, where it is most convenient for our children. New York is where we want to be.”

On West Side, Landmark Neo-Georgian Goes For $9 M.

The landmark neo-Georgian townhouse at 22 West 74th Street, the 42-year home of the Stephen Gaynor School, has been sold for $9.1 million.

“It was a wild sale,” said Corcoran senior vice president Anne Snee, the firm’s director of townhouse sales. “Brown Harris Stevens had the exclusive, but I brought the buyer. I came in at the last minute, put together a contract in one day, and we signed in the lobby of the school head’s co-op apartment at night. We knocked out several other people.”

Ileen Schoenfeld and Dorothy Arnsten, the Brown Harris Stevens brokers who listed the townhouse, are both on vacation.

“It’s a beauty,” head of school Scott Gaynor said about the townhouse. His program works with students who don’t meet their academic potential, “which can fall under the criteria of learning disabled—or special education.”

The townhouse is one of 18 mansions built by the Clark family, developers of the Dakota. “In an ideal world it would have been nice if a school moved in,” Mr. Gaynor said. “But a 10,000-square-foot brownstone is out of reach of most educational programs.”

Ms. Snee said the buyers, a hedge-fund manager and his wife, asked not to be named. According to city records, the couple sold their co-op at 44 West 77th Street last month for $4.4 million.

This fall the school will move to its new 37,000-square-foot building at 148 West 90th Street.

Because of that construction, Ms. Snee said, the contract for the 74th Street townhouse took 16 months to close. And it will be another year before the neo-Georgian mansion transforms from a school for 120 students into a single-family home.

“It has to be ripped to smithereens,” she said. “It’s going to be wonderful. Wonderful!”

Siemens Chief Sells At Belvedere For $3.97 M.

Albert Hoser, the founder and chairman emeritus of the Siemens Foundation, has sold his penthouse at the Park Belvedere for $3.97 million.

Mr. Hoser, now retired, and his wife Doris will be heading to Florida and also plan to spend time in Germany. But they said they’re sad to be leaving New York.

“[It] hurts like hell,” said Ms. Hoser.

“We have all four views here,” Mr. Hoser added. “We see the Hudson, of course, directly in front of us, and Central Park on the other side. So that is very nice, very beautiful.”

“I sit on my terrace at night,” Ms. Hoser said. “Sometimes I felt like the warden of the West Side.”

They’ve got a while to get used to the idea. Though the deal closed in June, they won’t be moving out until this fall, after Ms. Hoser has run her 10th New York Marathon.

Mr. Hoser served as the chief executive of the Siemens Corporation from 1991 to 1999. He left to helm the nonprofit Siemens Foundation, which now runs the high-school science competition previously known as Westinghouse.

The couple moved to New York in 1991.

“At that point,” Ms. Hoser said, “the West Side wasn’t quite ‘in.’”

Really?

The seven-room penthouse at 101 West 79th was sold without a broker. Though Mr. Hoser described the buyer as a company “we’ve known for quite a while,” he wouldn’t identify it.

“I am 72,” Mr. Hoser said. “For me, it was finally time to retire.”