The illustrious Beresford building, at 7 West 81st Street, recently lost Goodyear Tire heiress Dorothy Seiberling Steinberg, who sold her co-op in the building earlier this month for $3.8 million. But Beresford residents—thoroughly accustomed to sharing their halls with diplomats, athletes, and stars of stage and screen—will be getting another heiress transplanted from points West. (Thank goodness!) Coke Anne Murchison Wilcox and her husband Jarvis G. Wilcox have purchased a 2-bedroom, 18th-floor apartment in the building for just under $4.6 million, according to city records.
Ms. Wilcox’s father founded both the Dallas Cowboys and the Cowboy Restaurant, in Manhattan. But perhaps his greatest (or at least his most lucrative) achievement was his acquisition and aggressive expansion of Tony Roma’s restaurant, which today operates more than 150 locations from Florida to Guam. Ms. Wilcox cut her teeth working for the “Famous for Ribs” chain, and subsequently owned and ran the historical Maidstone Arms inn and restaurant in East Hampton, where in 2001, the New York Times reported, she hoped George W. Bush might visit, so that she could make him at home with some Texan vittles.
President Bush has never lived at the Beresford (or in any other Manhattan co-op for that matter), but the building’s appointments are right on par with those found in the White House. Mr. and Ms. Wilcox’s new place occupies a corner perch and benefits from three exposures, with park, museum and skyline views. There are two massive bedrooms, one of which, the listing suggests, might be converted to a library. Though Mr. Wilcox, an artist, might prefer a studio.
No strangers to art and charity events, the couple will no-doubt also appreciate the unit’s spacious walk-in closets, perfect for holding a vast assortment of evening gowns. The listing also suggests that a buyer in yearning for more than the apartment’s five rooms might reasonably combine it with an adjacent unit, which was simultaneously on the market, for an 11-room spread. Alas, that property, which sold the same day, went to other house hunters, for the sum of $5.9 million.
We feel reasonably assured, though, that Ms. Wilcox will be perfectly comfortable in her new pad. It is not as though she planned to install a barbecue pit on premises, after all—even if she does have to go to Queens, just for a taste of her family’s famous ribs.
