It may seem as if actor Harrison Ford is constantly moaning to
the press that he’s never so happy as when he’s on his ranch in Jackson Hole,
Wyo., but the 59-year-old actor has just bought another apartment in Manhattan.
With kids in school in the city, Mr. Ford and his estranged wife,
Melissa Mathison, have had a rather proper Central Park West co-op for some
time. Now Mr. Ford has acquired a 5,000-square-foot penthouse near Sixth Avenue
in Chelsea that was asking $6.25 million. Broker Jan Hashey of Insignia Douglas
Elliman was the exclusive broker on the sale, which was final in January.
The Chelsea loft wasn’t the only downtown space Mr. Ford
considered. Brokers said he looked at a penthouseat420West Broadway, the old
home of Leo Castelli’s downtown gallery, as well as an apartment in the new
development at 19 Beach Street in Tribeca.
Mr. Ford has been staying at Soho’s Mercer Hotel while waiting
for his apartment to be ready. Since the space was delivered “raw,” Mr. Ford
has retained 1100 Architect-designers of the J. Crew, Armani and MoMA stores in
Soho, as well as the Greenwich Village residence of Eric Fischl and April
Gornik and Ross Bleckner’s six-story house on White Street in Tribeca-to design
it.
According to plans filed with the city’s Department of Buildings,
Mr. Ford has obtained approval to configure the space with walls and bathrooms,
a chimney and fireplace as well as a stairway leading from the apartment to a
planned 3,500-square-foot roof deck. In the records, the cost of the basic
renovations will run about $250,000.
That won’t begin to cover the city boy’s décor.
House, Owners Part After Long Affair
After a 30-year romance, a spectacular yet worn 1905
Beaux Arts townhouse at 131 East 64th Street and its owner, Emmanuel Sella, an
immigrant businessman who had an amazing past himself, have parted ways.
Born in Lithuania in 1925, Sella stowed away on a ship
headed to Palestine and arrived in Tel Aviv just eight days before World War II
broke out, with very little more than the names and addresses of relatives sewn
into his pants’ pockets by his mother. He fought in an underground military
organization for Israeli independence, and at the age of 23 was appointed the commander
of the coastal defenses. After Israel was established as an independent state,
Sella worked for the Ministry of Labor in the development department. Soon
after, he landed a scholarship to study in the U.S., where he got a bachelor’s
degree from Syracuse and a Master’s of Arts from Harvard.
After moving to New
York, he founded the Amivest Corporation, an investment-management company that
acquired a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1973. One year prior to that,
he had acquired an Upper East Side townhouse for $325,000.
The 20-foot-wide, five-story house between Park and
Lexington avenues had been built in 1905 by architect Augustus N. Allen. The
façade is grand and elegant, with a large centered, segmented, arched entrance
with a wrought-iron front door, three-sided metal bay window on the second and
third floors and three balconies. Inside, the parlor floor has a circular music
room, a living room and a formal dining room. The third floor has two large
bedrooms and an outdoor terrace, and both the fourth and fifth floors have
three bedrooms.
Raising five children in the New York townhouse, Sella
also bought a house north of Tel Aviv and went on to help establish the first
supermarket chain in Israel; he also helped finance and build the Tel Aviv Hilton
hotel.
In the early 90’s, he toyed with selling the 64th
Street house, located on a block where many houses have changed hands recently
for as much as $5.2 million. Townhouse brokers recall showing the five-story
home in 1995, but Nancy Candib of Brown Harris Stevens, who is handling the
property now, said the house was taken off the market after a month.
Sella passed away last June, and four months later his
widow put the house on the market for $6.9 million. In the second week of
January, the price was dropped to $5.9 million, and one week later a contract
was signed for close to the asking price.
According to Ms. Candib, the well-lived-in house has
great bones but needs updating. On the other hand, the buyer-a not-for-profit
foundation-was more interested in the large number of bedrooms that can be
turned into private offices. The buyers were represented by Leslie J. Garfield.
Sella’s widow, Aviva, is reluctantly looking for
another residence in the city-though, brokers said, it won’t be home.
UPPER EAST SIDE
1020
Park Avenue
Two-bed, two-and-a-half-bath,
1,750-square-foot co-op.
Asking:
$1.250 million. Selling: $1.125 million.
Charge:
$1,657; 40 percent tax-deductible.
Time
on the market: six weeks.
MIKE-MINDED Just as incoming Mayor
Michael Bloomberg couldn’t quite make his way around the idea of leaving his
lavish mansion near Fifth Avenue for creaky old yellow clapboard digs near a
dog run on East End Avenue, a Southern couple retiring to the city couldn’t imagine
themselves living in a white box. This apartment’s house-like orientation
lowered their blood pressure quite a bit. Located in a respectable but not too
fancy building near East 85th Street, this duplex co-op has a large foyer, a
dining room and a spiral staircase leading up to a second floor with two
bedrooms, each with its own full bath. According to broker Norma Hirsh of
Insignia Douglas Elliman, the couple had looked at several more claustrophobic
properties before deciding to buy this one, near their children’s homes.
Apparently, however, the couple also couldn’t imagine themselves haggling with
a New Yorker, as they paid the asking price for the apartment.
UPPER WEST SIDE
12 West 72nd Street (the Oliver Cromwell)
Two-bed, two-bath, 1,100-square-foot co-op.
Asking: $699,000. Selling: $699,000.
Charges: $1,549; 68 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: six weeks.
MAJORING
IN PREWAR When it was built in the 1920’s by Emery Roth, this 30-story
building between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue seemed to be aiming to
house rulers of industry. Named after Oliver Cromwell-the 17th-century English
Civil War leader who, besides having King Charles I beheaded for treason, is
probably most famous for having the largest cranium of any English ruler
(though he refused the title of king himself, ruling England for 15 years as
its “Lord Protector”)-the building was called “one of Manhattan’s finest
free-standing towers of the 1920’s” by architecture writer Steven Ruttenbaum.
With its two-story arched entrance and opulent lobby, it lured a television and
film producer from her beloved neighborhood of Gramercy Park several years ago.
“She’s a prewar lover,” said broker Marcia Rosen-House, of Bellmarc Realty, of
her client. And while she may not be precisely the resident the architect had
in mind, the woman is ruled by her job. After taking pains to restore the very
traditional apartment-which has three exposures, high-beamed ceilings and now,
a new kitchen, renovated bathrooms and new wood floors-she was offered a job
out of town and put her apartment up for sale in August. According to Ms.
Rosen-House, for the seller “it was an opportunity to move up again.” She’s
found a gracious home down South.
GREENWICH VILLAGE
77 East 12th Street
One-bed, one-bath, 650-square-foot co-op.
Asking: $349,000. Selling: $337,500.
Charges $638; 27 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: one day.
GOING … GOING … GONE A native of Atlanta bought this apartment in 1998
and had been gradually renovating it himself. As if anticipating the downturn
in the economy, he moved in with roommates in Chelsea and started to collect
rent on the co-op. But last fall, when his tenant lost his job, instead of
finding a new tenant, the landlord decided to sell the place. He contacted
broker Margaret Heffernan, a neighbor, and asked her to help him sell the small
one-bedroom co-op-quick. With speed in mind, Ms. Heffernan said she priced the
apartment low, but when the place sold to a young couple who had been renting a
studio elsewhere in the building, the price dropped some more: The buyers were
able to negotiate the price down an additional $11,500. Though they may have
gotten a better deal, Ms. Heffernan said they are not the first renters to end
up buying an apartment in the building. “I had two sales last year to people
who were renting in this building,” she said. “All of our renters always seem
interested in buying here.”
