NYC penthouse triplex on sale for $70 million!

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photo credits: Brown, Harris, Stevens

December 3, 2006

Chateau in the Sky

By JOHN FREEMAN GILL

The New York Times

On a blustery February afternoon in 1930, a genteel hotel impresario named Charles Pierre Casalasco led a hardy troupe of debutantes wearing cloche hats and fur stoles up flight after flight of stairs to the roof of the unfinished 42-story building.

Perched on high heels with only a few wooden planks standing between them and a plunge to Fifth Avenue, the debutantes blinked into a stiff wind as one of them helped drive the last rivet, a gold one, into the steel framework.

By October of that year, the Pierre’s top two floors, including the exposed wooden platform on which the debs braved the elements, would be transformed into a glamorous breakfast room and night club, “decorated to resemble the interior of a zeppelin cabin,†according to The New York Sun. 

Though its interior was off-limits to most of the city, however, its ornate exterior became a signature feature of the Fifth Avenue skyline.

Set atop a slender tower of cream-colored brick, the Pierre’s upper floors had the rarefied aspect of a French chateau in the sky, complete with a gleaming copper mansard roof 500 feet above 61st Street.

The New Yorker hailed the new hotel as a “millionaires’ Elysium,†and the description still applies.

The space once occupied by that rooftop restaurant is now a private penthouse triplex on the market for a cool $70 million, which brokers say is the highest price ever listed for a New York residence.

The primary selling point is the 3,500-square-foot grand salon, the former ballroom of the Pierre Roof.

Occupying most of the 42nd floor, the room is bordered by 20-foot-high Palladian windows and topped by a curved 23-foot ceiling.

On each of the room’s two west-facing corners, soaring French doors open onto terraces offering breathtaking views of Central Park and beyond. The master bedroom suite has two additional corner terraces.

If the triplex sells for anything close to its asking price this time, it will again smash the record for the biggest single residential deal in city history, topping the Harkness mansion on East 75th Street, which was sold in October for $53 million.

Though the Pierre penthouse’s staggering price tag has attracted news media attention from around the world, its lavish interior has been seen only rarely over the last three decades.

"When they walk into the ballroom, their mouths just fall wide open,†said Elizabeth Lee Sample, the Brown Harris Stevens broker who, with her colleague Brenda Powers, holds the exclusive listing for the triplex.

The wallet of the eventual buyer will also have to fall wide open. The Pierre cooperative requires that apartments be bought entirely in cash.

By comparison with the asking price, the annual maintenance fee of $464,600 seems almost modest, particularly since the services of a uniformed housekeeper and houseman are included.

Two would-be buyers have made $70 million offers since the 16-room, 5-fireplace triplex went on the market in October 2004, Ms. Sample said. “But it doesn’t mean anything,†she added, “until we get them through the board.â€

Still, the penthouse’s richest treasure may well be its spectacular 360-degree views of the city.

When the makers of the 1998 movie “Meet Joe Black†wanted to convey the idea that the Anthony Hopkins character was a man with the world at his feet, they cast the Pierre penthouse as his residence, filming the exterior from a helicopter and shooting the views from its windows.

The panorama seen through those windows has changed considerably in the last 76 years, and as glassy new condos pop up all over town, the penthouse retains enough of its original grandeur to make a visit there feel like stepping into an ever rarer New York.

As an apartment, it is a peculiar space with some surprisingly modest-size rooms orbiting the gargantuan salon. For a family of four, dining in the former ballroom might feel about as cozy as eating in Grand Central Terminal after the crowds have gone.

But for the American and European billionaires who have been viewing the triplex as a potential pied-à-terre, such quibbles are largely beside the point.

“People really look at it like buying a rare piece of art rather than an apartment,†said Ms. Sample, the broker.

“It’s not like buying a penthouse in a new building where the top five floors are basically all identical and all called penthouses,†she added. “It’s a thing of beauty that can’t be replicated.â€

Edited December 6, 2006 by hoss

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credit: Brown, Harris, Stevens

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credit: Brown, Harris, Stevens

[xfirefighter484x 234]

I GOT IT!!!

If all 5,073 members of this board throw down a few bucks each (a mere $13,798.54), we could all get in on this $70 mil baby!!

We would have to think of a way to work it out for visitations though. We could make it a timeshare so everyone could enjoy it, and each person could get to spend 1 hour, 43 minutes, and 36 seconds in there a year!

Either that, or we make it into the new EMTBravo HQ, and we all have access anytime (Members Club type deal).

I'm down!

Anyone else??

[JM15 386]

sign me up