According to city records, premier contemporary art dealer Christophe Van de Weghe, whose Upper East Side and Chelsea galleries are among the leading contemporary ones in Manhattan, recently sold his loft apartment at 77 Mercer Street for $2.8 million. Mr. Van de Weghe, who represents works by artists ranging from Andy Warhol to Gerhard Richter, bought the apartment from art dealer Stellan Holm for $1.6 million in February of 2004.
Six years later, the Belgian-born dealer du jour appears to have made a $1.2 million profit on the 1,947-square-foot, hardwood-floored Soho loft with “soaring ceilings.” The handsome cast-iron store and building between Broome and Spring streets was built and designed by architect Jesse W. Powers in the mid-1870s.
The fourth-floor apartment was dubbed “THE most elegant condominium in Soho!” by a Corcoran rental listing in the building, so it isn’t hard to see why Mr. Van de Weghe garnered such a high price for it. The buyer is an LLC called Real Mercer 77, a limited liability company first registered this past August care of the LLP Withers Bergman.
After making a reputation for himself as, in the words of Art & Auction magazine, “a globe-trotting super-salesman,” at the mammoth Gagosian Gallery, Mr. Van de Weghe branched out on his own, opening a gallery devoted exclusively to the secondary market for contemporary and modern art.
In his 4,000-square-foot, ground-floor gallery space in Chelsea, Mr. Van de Weghe, who according to Art Review has put on “some first rate exhibitions by the likes of Richard Serra, Andy Warhol and Bruce Nauman,” has the room to display large-scale works such as Mr. Serra’s steel prop pieces, which have ranged in price from $500,000 to $1 million.
The 6-foot-4 former amateur tennis star, who bought a $2.1 million modern home on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton in 2005, politely declined to comment on the Mercer Street sale.
cmalle@observer.com
