The Plaza’s Dictatorial Spread

“That’s interesting,” the broker Giampiero Rispo said on Sept. 24, “I don’t think that’s possible.” The Plaza’s developers had just put the old hotel’s 9,350-square-foot, 14-room, five-bedroom, three-unit, third-floor apartment back on the market for $39 million, even though one of Mr. Rispo’s clients had signed a contract to buy it more than a year ago.

But that client is the fallen Italian businessman Luigi Zunino. Earlier this year, the Plaza gave him extra time to close on the sprawl. He didn’t.

The apartment’s new listing, especially the floor plan, is spectacular: This is a condo that could house a small country; the salon alone is 44.5 feet long. But the heft is also poignant. If the sprawl hadn’t been so incredibly massive, Mr. Zunino would’ve been able to keep it.

On Friday, his broker was more resigned about the listing: “It did catch me by surprise,” Mr. Rispo said, “because we were still wishing that were going to get through.” - Max Abelson

It’s always good to have a giant entryway before you get to the official reception area, so you can take a second to appreciate the custom humidification system.

The master bedroom suite is incredibly far from the other bedrooms, which is either glamorous or troublesome. On the plus side, it includes a double dressing room in between two bathrooms.

The listing says that all the apartment’s major rooms are “arranged en enfilade along Central Park and Grand Army Plaza,” which is another way of saying that you have to shlep through one room to get to another.

Sometime around last December, representatives of Silvio Berlusconi came to see the apartment, possibly to work out some sort of deal for it. Surely they appreciated the 55-foot-long gallery—which doesn’t seem very functional, but is very awesome nonetheless.

It’s not clear how the study differs from the library that’s next to the living room, or from the office that’s next to the library, but they’re all probably nice.

The listing says the sprawl includes the Plaza’s former State Rooms, “which were originally used for lavish private entertaining.” Isn’t lavishness so five years ago?