When Forest City Ratner executive vice president—and soon to be CEO, once Bruce Ratner steps down—Maryanne Gilmartin spoke to Westchester Magazine, she was asked for “the most baseless criticism” leveled against her. She responded, “That I don’t really know Brooklyn, so I’m not qualified to develop a project there. I lived in Brooklyn from 1988 to 1993.”
That criticism is about to get a little more baseless: Ms. Gilmartin and her husband, James, just bought a townhouse in Park Slope, according to city records. The couple paid $3.85 million for the four-story, 20-foot-wide brownstone at 113 St. John’s Place, and will presumably be moving from their home in Edgemont, New York.
Situated between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, Ms. Gilmartin’s new home is close enough to Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development that Ms. Gilmartin can walk to Nets games (1 MetroTech, where she works, is a bit of a slog), but not so close that she’ll have to compete with arena-goers over parking, or deal with the Barclays Center’s booming bass or the sudden outbreaks of Bieber fever that have been known to grip the neighborhood.
And while Forest City Ratner normally chooses modernist architects for its projects—Renzo Piano for the New York Times building, Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce Street and SHoP at Atlantic Yards—Ms. Gilmartin’s new abode is thoroughly classical. The interior doorways are still framed by elaborate wooden pilasters, pediments and other classical architectural elements that we’re not sophisticated enough to identify, and the wooden fireplace and staircase remain intact.
Ms. Gilmartin unfortunately could not use the power of eminent domain to seize the six-bedroom, 4,160-square foot home from sellers Paul and Chandra Graves, and in fact had to pay $100,000 over the asking price of $3.75 million. The sellers were represented by Libby and Maria Ryan of Brown Harris Stevens, and the buyers by James Cornell and Leslie Marshall at Corcoran.
