Move over Marc Jacobs: Cynthia Rowley is abandoning Tribeca and expanding her reach into the West Village. In July, Ms. Rowley, most known for marketing tea-party chic to the masses, purchased a townhouse on Perry Street for $2.495 million, city records show. The move came one month after she listed her Tribeca loft at 354 Broadway for $2.4 million back in June.
“Cynthia loves the neighborhood and the home is close to her offices,” a spokesperson for Ms. Rowley said.
Ms. Rowley purchased the townhouse in July, transfer records show. The four-story home, on Perry Street between West 4th Street and Seventh Avenue, is built 20 feet wide and currently has tenants living on the upper floors. Ms. Rowley plans to renovate the property into a private residence.
The purchase also puts her at the doorstep of her offices. Her company’s downtown boutique and corporate office at 376 Bleecker Street sits just around the corner between Perry and Charles streets.
In Tribeca, Ms. Rowley is currently installed in a luxurious loft on Broadway between Leonard and Franklin streets. But she’s looking to sell and has listed the property with Eugene Cordano of Halstead Property for $2.4 million. The 2,770-square-foot apartment has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The spread’s sumptuous details include 12-foot ceilings, marble counters and tile, stainless-steel professional kitchen appliances, a customizable lighting system and a wood-burning fireplace. The interior design is done in a minimal style.
“She’s ready to move, she needs more space,” Ms. Rowley’s broker, Mr. Cordano, said, speaking of her Tribeca to West Village trade-up.
To be sure, Ms. Rowley’s real-estate portfolio reflects her high sense of style. An Illinois native, Ms. Rowley now has boutiques in New York, East Hampton, Los Angeles, Chicago and Japan. In 2001, she perhaps became best known for co-authoring, with Ilene Rosenzweig (the wife of New York Times beta-male Rick Marin), Swell: A Girl’s Guide to the Good Life. This spring, the duo will release the fourth book in their style-manual series, The Swell Dressed Party. The pair’s designs, from the Swell Riviera bedding collection to the Swell Happiness Rose pillow, can also be found on the shelves of Target.
The sprawling West Village townhouse that had recently been the shooting location for MTV’s Making the Band 2 and HBO’s Angels in America has been purchased by newly minted shipping magnate Peter Georgiopoulos, city records show. In July, according to transfer records on file with the city, the New York–native Mr. Georgiopoulos, the chairman of publicly traded General Maritime Corporation, bought a pair of townhouses at 47 Charles Street for $7.7 million; the deal includes the attached carriage house. The properties, which total some 8,000 square feet and cover two 19th-century townhouses and an conjoining carriage house, first went on the market in 2002 for $11.5 million. The buildings’ owner, the developer Daniel Kohs, purchased the properties in April 2000 for $2.05 million.
Mr. Georgiopoulos was traveling in Europe and unavailable for comment. His broker, Lee Summers of Sotheby’s International Realty, said that Mr. Georgiopoulos was most impressed by the townhouse’s size, and West Village location. “He plans to make this his New York residence,” Ms. Summers said.
Mr. Kohs’ broker, Joan Kaplan of the Corcoran Group, declined to comment on the identities of the parties involved in the sale, but did speak to the townhouses’ luxurious pedigree.
“It’s very unusual to find three properties combined, and renovated into one giant residence,” Ms. Kaplan said. “It’s a superb residence, one of the finest.”
The renovation transformed the 34-foot-wide townhouse, on the corner of Charles and West 4th streets, to total six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a game room, a roof garden and a cellar with a sauna. The property comes with a pre-wired home theater, and includes other luxuries such as a private rear garden reached through French doors beyond the entry foyer. Ms. Summers indicated that Mr. Georgiopoulos plans a renovation to the mansion.
The home has a history in the entertainment world. Before Mr. Georgiopoulos closed on the property this summer, MTV rented the sprawling spread and filmed Sean P. Diddy Combs’ reality program Making the Band 2 there, which featured a group of amateur hip-hop artists trying to score a record deal. The program drew ire of neighbors who were used to the West Village’s understated charm and were unhappy with MTV’s brash presence. Police followed up on five complaints relating to the filming, according to reports at the time.
“When you have a nighttime culture in a daytime neighborhood, you’re just asking for trouble,” Eileen Robert, a neighbor, told the New York Sun back in June. Prior to filming Making the Band 2, Mr. Kohs rented the property to HBO as a shooting location for their celebrated screen adaptation of Angels in America. And before Mr. Georgiopoulos purchased the townhouse, a real-estate source familiar with the deal said both Hilary Swank and Michael J. Fox toured the property as potential buyers.
No stranger to luxury himself, Mr. Georgiopoulos’ company has become one of the most powerful shipping firms in the world with clients including Sunoco, Chevron Texaco, Petrobras and Kuwait Petroleum. General Maritime, which is based in midtown, operates 47 tankers and is the second largest mid-size tanker company in the world, with the capacity to ferry 30 million barrels of crude oil from ports in the Caribbean, South and Central America, the United States, West Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe and the North Sea.
Recent Transactions in the Real Estate Market
Upper West Side
119 West 71st Street
Two-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op.
Asking: $625,000. Selling: $620,000.
Maintenance: $867; 50 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: six weeks.
‘SLEEPER’ GETS ASKING—ALMOST The gentleman who lived in this prewar co-op for the past 25 years recently decided to relocate out of the city, and his listing presented a rare opportunity to buy into this 37-unit apartment building between Broadway and Columbus Avenue. “This is a small building and there are not a lot of resales here,” the seller’s broker, Jane Goldberg of Century 21 William B. May, said. The buyer, a real-estate consultant for a major accounting firm, had been renting in the West 50’s before he found this spread. The single gentleman paid nearly asking for the two bedroom, which has 10-foot ceilings and original moldings that date back to 1911. “It’s a sleeper of a building, though it has a lot of charm,” Ms. Goldberg said. James Lake, of Bellmarc Realty, represented the buyer.
Chelsea
410 West 24th Street
One-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op.
Asking: $625,000. Selling: $625,000.
Maintenance: $1,082; 43 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: two weeks.
LONDON CALLING The downtown trust-funder who owned this 805-square-foot London Terrace spread recently decided he had enough of the Manhattan lifestyle. Three years ago, his parents purchased him this three-room pied-à-terre, but he wanted to settle full-time in Miami where he had been spending the bulk of his time. Perhaps with summer drawing to a close, thoughts of the coming arctic freeze spurred him southward. The thirtysomething found a retired gentleman who recently cashed out of his Park Slope townhouse and wanted to experience the excitement of downtown living. He got this apartment in the sprawling London Terrace building, on 24th Street at Ninth Avenue, that has north and east exposures, oak-strip hardwood floors and refinished original door frames. The popular building’s amenities include a planted roof deck, a health club featuring an indoor heated pool and a bicycle storage room. Bruce Solomon and Howard Margolis, both of Douglas Elliman, represented the seller. Susan Weiner, of Debra Kameros Company, represented the buyer on the deal.
Park Slope
121 Sterling Place
Three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom condo.
Asking: $1.19 million. Selling: $1.18 million.
Charges: $563. Taxes: $960.
Time on the market: two weeks.
J’ACUZZI! These Park Slope spa-owners discovered the simple life when they cashed out of their seven-figure spread and landed on a bucolic farm in the earthy Hudson Valley. Owners of a chain of popular Manhattan spas, they decided to manage their business from the tranquil setting of their new farm. The buyers of their Park Slope condo—which has spa-type touches including a Jacuzzi bath and a granite kitchen with stainless-steel appliances—were an attorney and his choreographer wife. Other details of the 2,338-square-foot condo, which is on Sterling Place between Sixth and Seventh avenues, include high ceilings, north, south and east exposures, and a private terrace. “Since they were coming from Manhattan, they were looking for more of a community,” said exclusive broker Adam Pacelli of the Corcoran Group. “And the best part of this place was the space. It felt like its own spa. A true oasis,” Mr. Pacelli added.
