The Office of the City Register lists as the recent seller of the $3.9 million 32nd-floor combination at 422 East 72nd Street one Stewart J. Rahr, the billionaire philanthropist who in 2010 sold Kinray Pharmaceuticals, which he’d grown from a small family business into the largest privately-held industry wholesaler in the country. But according to an October profile in Forbes, Mr. Rahr has since his May divorce from Carol Rahr—his wife of 43 years—been replaced with a hard-partying, fame-obsessed character by the name “Stewie Rah Rah Number One King of All Fun,” a figure clad habitually in bright yellow sunglasses who uses as a personal anthem Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines and who owns a phone case that reads “I Love Ibiza.”
We imagine that the folks at city records might have been less than thrilled had Mr. Rahr requested that his lengthy new monicker be entered into their databases—though we suppose a Stewie Rah Rah LLC would have been acceptable—but it will most certainly be Ms. Rahr, anyway, who benefits from the sale, even if the condo can account only for a tiny portion of the Rahrs’ $250 million settlement.
Not so number one king of all fun? All the renovation work that new owners Richard and Joann Bianco, who entered contract after the property had spent about six months on the market, will need to do on the condo.
Sotheby's Harry Nasser, who handled the listing, was quite frank about the apartment’s condition: “Bring your architect,” he suggested. “After some updating, you will have the most luxurious apartment in the Upper East Side.” Though there are three balconies, abundant light and a generous master suite, photographs show great, cold expanses of grey marble floor and wall. The effect is of something Tony Montana might have coveted circa 1983, a style which would seem to accent rather aptly Mr. Rahr’s newborn hedonism. (Though the Biancos hail from Boca Raton, according to city records, so perhaps they will see no need to undo the unit’s throwback Floridian flavor.)
Ms. Rahr is due to take over the $30 million Trump Park Avenue apartment that the couple occupied (now that’s a bitter pill). But the pharma mogul will hang on to his $45 million East Hampton estate, where he has hosted Andrea Bocelli, Lionel Richie and Alicia Keys, among others. And though he has jettisoned his 3,368 square-foot holdings on 72nd Street, it was not because he spurned its size. One need look no further than Mr. Rahr’s sex tape, which surfaced in June featuring three young women in the back of a limousine, to know that Mr. Rahr believes as much as anyone that when it comes to entertaining, size really doesn’t matter.
