LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $88,000,000
SIZE: 6,744 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Today we offer the children a mouth-watering snippet of New York City floor plan porn courtesy of Josh Barbanel who yesterday presented a juicy real estate report in The Wall Street Journal about the filthy rich former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup Sanford "Sandy" Weill who has officially listed his full-floor penthouse spread at the swish and swank 15 Central Park West building with a bone rattling asking price of–are y'all sitting down?–$88,000,000.
Mister Weill and his wife Joan shelled out $43,687,750–or $42,405,000 depending on where one looks–for the the deluxe 6,744 square foot penthouse back in August 2007. At the time it was one of the highest amounts paid per square foot for a private residence in Manhattan. The single-level, mansion-sized penthouse carries, according to listing information we peeped, monthly maintenance fees and taxes that total $13,824.
The 10-room aerie–perched atop the shorter of 15 Central Park West's two towers limestone-clad towers–has ceilings that soar to 12.5 feet; 19 French doors that open to a park- and city-view terraces that wraps around three sides of the apartment; a cavernous 825-plus square foot living room with fireplace; an adjacent and far more cozy library–also with fireplace–paneled in high-contrast Brazilian rosewood; a formal dining room; den/family room with wet bar; and an eat-in kitchen larger than the entire apartments of most Manhattanites.
Two family/guest rooms, each private windowed facility and small closet, open off the long rear hall and a third family or guest bedroom with private bath and walk-in closet has been, as indicated on the floor plan, incorporated into the sprawling corner master suite complete with three walk-in closets, a lavish windowed bathroom, and an elliptical bedroom with elaborate ribbed plaster walls and an unobstructed easterly view of the sunrise over Central Park.
Mister and Missus Weill had the building's much lauded and applauded architect Robert A.M. Stern do up the interior spaces that appear, but for a few quirks, very livable and well resolved. We're not thrilled that food servers must pass through the den/family room to get from the kitchen to the butler's pantry and formal dining room and we were utterly perplexed by the rather large walk-in wet bar stashed in to the rear hall opposite the bedrooms until we realized the set up is conveniently perfect for over-nighting booze hounds like Your Mama who sometimes require a little nip of gin in the middle of the night.
Mister Weill told The Wall Street Journal that he and the Missus '"are not leaving the city and giving up the wonderful opportunity to be New York City residents and New York City taxpayers."' He went on to tell Mister Barbanel that they've decided to sell their impossibly posh penthouse–at least in part–because it's '"a pretty good time" for wealthy Americans "to be quiet"" and are '"downsizing a little bit"' into another significantly smaller apartment they own in the building that the kids at Curbed long ago dubbed "The Limestone Jesus."
Far be it from Your Mama to toss an ugly wrench in things but we just find it a little difficult to believe that Mister and Missus Weill actually plan to decamp their nearly 7,000 square foot art-filled penthouse at 15 Central Park West to the comparatively minuscule 1,084 square foot one-bedroom apartment property records show they picked up in October 2007 for $978,737. Then again, what do we really know about anything?
It seems people of Mister and Missus Weill's extreme financial clout downsize and live quietly a wee bit differently than the average multi-millionaire or minimum wage worker. As far as Your Mama can tell based on property records and previous reports, the high-flying Weills continue to own a number of other luxury residences that include a substantial estate in a prime section of sleepy but oh-so-swank Greenwich, CT, a luxe-rustic camp in the Adirondacks region of Upstate New York, and a 392-acre spread with an 11,605 square foot mansion in Sonoma, CA they bought last year for a not very quiet $31,000,000.
It probably won't make a bit of difference to many if any of the 99-percenters who revile Mister Weill and insanely wealthy Wall Street plutocrats like him, but it should be (re-)reported he and his wife told Mister Barbanel they plans to donate the proceeds from the sale of the penthouse, which could stretch into the tens of million, to unspecified charitable organizations.
Other well-heeled owners of apartments at 15 Central Park West include celebs like Denzel Washington, and Sting and Trudy Styler as well as a slew of Wall Street fat cats likeGoldman Sachs CEO and chairman Lloyd Blankfein who paid $27,000,000 for his roost and hedge hog Daniel Loeb (who paid $45,000,000 for his 10,700 square foot two-unit combo crib) and Goldman Sachs CEO and chairman Lloyd Blankfein
listing photo and floor plan (top): Brown Harris Stevens
interior photos: Durston Saylor for Architectural Digest
