Manhattan Transfers

It's no Graceland, but 151 East 72nd Street will have to do for Mr. Sillerman.

From Movies to Music: HBO Honcho Sells UES Townhouse to Beatport Owner

After his $50 million golf venture on the Caribbean island of Anguilla went spectacularly awry, Robert F.X. Sillerman told the New York Post, “I think I have shown conclusively I’m not knowledgeable enough about the real estate business.”

Poor judgment in the West Indies aside, we’re betting that the music industry Renaissance man—Mr. Sillerman’s business interests range from the concert promoting titan that became Live Nation to Elvis’s old Graceland estate—will do a lot better with his latest purchase: a $12 million limestone townhouse on the Upper East Side.

The five-story, 18.5-foot-wide home was sold by HBO CEO Richard Plepler, who was not easily parted with the townhouse. After buying 151 East 72nd Street for almost $8.2 million in 2002, he got greedier than a Valyrian slave trader and tried to double his money by asking $18.5 million in 2008. While he may have had some takers a year earlier, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy not a week later, prompting his broker, Jaar-Mel Sloane of Sloane Square, to pull the listing a short time after. Read More

N.Y. Film Festival Fusty and Feisty at Crossroads

On Saturday, August 10, the selection committee for the 2002 New York Film Festival-composed of Film Society of Lincoln Center program director Richard Peña, associate program director Kent Jones, New York Times film columnist and City Search critic Dave Kehr, Newsday film critic John Anderson and Los Angeles Times film critic Manohla Dargis-finished deliberating over Read More

Barbra Streisand Asks $10.5 Million for Her Penthouse; Spike Lee Buys Upper East Side Town House

Upper West Side

PEOPLE WHO NEED EIGHT BEDROOMS: BARBRA STREISAND OFFERS 8,000-SQUARE-FOOT ARDSLEY PENTHOUSE. When newlyweds Barbra Streisand and James Brolin return to New York, they may have to deal with prospective buyers traipsing through the Ardsley duplex penthouse the singer has inhabited for years. According to real estate brokers, the 8,000-square-foot apartment, which Read More