We know we're a little late to the rodeo on this bit of real estate bizness it having already been discussed on Curbed. None the less, we've been following this real estate saga for some time and quite simply can't control our impulse to weigh in on the matter. Plus we're sort of smitten with the idiosyncratic pluck of radio hostess and heiress Alexis Stewart. Iffin you already know this crap and don't want to hear about it again just move along like good little doggies and Your Mama will have another celebrity real estate bone for you soon.With housekeeping honcho Martha Stewart's radio co-host daughter Alexis ensconced in her elephantine triplex in one of the celebrity-packed Richard Meier towers on New York City's bizzy bizzy bizzy West Side Highway, it seems she might finally be getting serious about unloading her previous penthouse pad located atop The Ice House building on TriBeCa's North Moore Street.
Property records show Miss Stewart–presumably with some money from mommy–purchased her loft-like duplex penthouse at The Ice House in May of 1999 for $2,953,000. She first tried to sell the 3,884 square foot aerie in September of 2007 with an asking price of $12,400,000. Nine months after first appearing on the open market Miss Stewart's apartment at The Ice House was taken off the market and seven months after that it was re-listed with a notably higher price tag of $12,950,000. By November of 2010 the price had plummeted to $10,450,000 and in mid-January 2011 Miss Stewart and her Real Estates slashed the asking price to $9,500,000. Perhaps finally selling her old penthouse is sassy Miss Stewart's New Year's resolution.
Miss Stewart's real estate white elephant at The Ice House includes private elevator access, 2-3 bedrooms, 3.5 poopers, a living room with fireplace and dramatic pitched-glass ceiling, a gore-may kitchen even a domestic dervish like her mother Martha could appreciate and a 500+ square foot terrace. Listing information shows the common charges and taxes total $6,590 per month.
Miss Stewart's current crib is a collection of contiguous apartments on three floors that were bought for a combined cost of around $35,000,000. No babies, that is not a error. Miss Stewart's digs actually cost her–or, more likely, her mother–around thirty-five million smackers, a blood curdling amount of moolah that does not include the many millions more spent on the combination, renovation and decoration of the super-sized condo.
Miss Stewart's penthouse at The Ice House was done up by nice, gay decorator–and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia employee–Kevin Sharkey and although we have no inside information or hard evidence to prove it, Your Mama would bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that it was Mister Sharkey who did up the day-core at Miss Alexis's new mansion in the Meier-designed tower.
Probably not coincidentally Mister Sharkey lives in a lavish spread in a recently-debuted-to-the-public apartment in the very same Richard Meier-designed building as Miss Stewart. While we're having trouble sorting out the property records it appears to Your Mama that Mister Sharkey's apartment is contiguous with Miss Stewart's multi-unit spread and might actually be one of the five apartments purchased by Miss Stewart and (allegedly) paid for by her momma.
Among the many dazzling photos of Mister Sharkey's apartment, one in particular caught Your Mama's eye. The photo shows Mister Sharkey and Miss Stewart, both in cocktail party attire, sitting on the tile floor of a bathroom with a bathtub full of Veuve Clicquot champagne and a frameless glass shower stall stacked to the ceiling with dozens and dozens of iconic orange Hermès gift boxes. While we love love love the color orange and we adore all things Hermès, Your Mama just doesn't understand the impulse of a certain kind of design queen who feels compelled to display Hermès gift boxes as if they are day-core. We happen to think Mister Sharkey is a talented and accomplished gentleman but bitch, pleeze. Really? The only reason we can conjure to explain why a person would use Hermès boxes as "day-core" is that they want to–as George says in Edward Albee's brilliant play Who's Afraid of Virginia–"impress the guests." The whole thing is a little unseemly and, quite frankly, it's even more unseemly to stack and "stash" dozens upon dozens of orange boxes in an all-glass shower in a feeble attempt to look like you don't care that much about them even though their careful arrangement screams another something else entirely.
Say what you may about Big Bad Martha Stewart but for where Your Mama sits she's an undeniably generous parent whose vast fortune allows her only daughter to live like a modern day tsarina and an unusually magnanimous (if notoriously persnickety) boss who pays at least one of her favored employees enough dough-ray-me to live in one of New York's most illustrious and exceedingly expensive buildings.
We should all be so damn lucky.
floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate via Streeteasy
