Thursday, October 24, 2013

Is Drew Barrymore Doing It On Park Avenue?

The celebrity real estate scuttlebutt out of New York City today has it that Tinseltown scion Drew Barrymore and her well-bred art consultant husband, Will Kopelman*, might be the wealthy peeps in contract to purchase a house-sized Park Avenue duplex last listed with an asking price of $8.3 million.

An unnamed tipster "with knowledge of the building" told the all-ears kids at Curbed that the child actor turned wild child turned all-grown-up Hollywood power player peeped a couple of pads in the swanky, full-service building before she and hubby decided on said top floor duplex that listing information describes as having undergone a recent renovation that brought it to triple mint condition.

Listing details don't indicate the size of the swanky co-operative apartment but after a few seconds of rudimentary and blunt-edged mathematics based on measurements shown on the floor plan (above) and Your Mama clocks it somewhere around 3,000 square feet. We count four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, three fireplaces, several coat and broom closets, and one nicely private powder room. Just to clarify, that's three real and reasonably generous bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms plus a squeezy staff bedroom and bathroom pinched into an extreme rear of the lower level behind the kitchen.

Although Park Avenue would not be an address of choice for Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter even if we were in the $8+ million dollar market but—and even though the Curbed kids were mostly nonplussed by the place, in addition to the preserved (or recreated) pre-war architectural details such as the fancy moldings and mill work that runs around the lower part of the walls in the double living room space, there are a number of features that really tickle our sometimes too persnickety real estate funny bone...in the good way.

We like how the small entry vestibule makes for a humble spatial counterweight to the expansive grandeur of the double-fireplaced living room/gallery combination space that sweeps more than fifty feet back to front where three sets of transomed French doors stretch almost all the way to the high ceiling and open to an ever-so-slender Juliet balcony 10 floors above the street.

Call us old fashioned—and we've been called so much worse just in the last 24 hours—but Your Mama swoons for a plus-sized dining room that does double duty as a library and, while we might prefer a larger kitchen area with more counter space, we find ourselves unusually drawn to the compact coziness of the adjoining space that manages to incorporate both a four-top dining area and a wee television lounge.

Upstairs two guest/family bedrooms with tiny closets and shared access to a goodly-sized and windowed Jack-'n'-Jill bathroom are well-placed to provide maximum privacy to the master bedroom, a suite of street-facing rooms connected by a central circulation corridor. In addition to the bedroom itself, there's a separate sitting room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls (above, left) and a fitted dressing room. The spacious, all-white master bathroom (above, right) has open-shelf linen storage, a double sink floating vanity with exposed plumbing, a soaking tub, and a separate stall shower.

Since and despite popular opinion we don't know them personally, it seems just about inexplicable to Your Mama that the sellers—photographer Adam Bartos and and his eminently accomplished foreign relations expert wife, Dr. Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos—only purchased the spacious duplex in April of this year (2013) for exactly $8.3 million. Huh. Anyways...

Miz Barrymore and Mister Kopelman reside primarily in Los Angeles in a gated hillside compound above the Outpost Estates neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills that Miz Barrymore has owned since 2002 when she bought it for $4,350,000. The couple also continue to own a vintage, Monterey Colonial estate in the hoity-toity seaside community of Montecito (CA) that they scooped in early 2010 for $5,705,000 and currently have on the market for a (recently reduced) asking price of $6.9 million.

*Mister Kopelman's sophisticated father, Arie, is the former CEO and chairman of Chanel—that would have made him Karl Lagerfelds boss!—and his mother, Corinne goes by the name—we are dead serious, chickens—Coco.

exterior photo: Kate Leonova for Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan: Sotheby's International Realty

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Weird layout. Looks like it was once huge, then cut up into smaller apartments, then partially reconnected.

lil' gay boy said...

Whilst I agree the layout is odd, for me that is it's very charm; the constant reconfiguration of these unique NYC properties often results in the most serendipitous spaces.

As for Ms Barrymore? Considering the dynasty she comes from, she is, undeniably, every inch a Barrymore.

Anonymous said...

Wow, posters on this blog sure do hate a lot of people (many people they don't even know).

Can't say i have a problem with Ms Barrymore/Kopelman. She might not be the most gifted actress in Hollywood, but the girl sure made a name for herself.

The apartment is kinda nice, just hate the add layout and size of the rooms. The kitchen could've been done better (or bigger). But all in all the apartment is nice.

Who'd ever thought we'd see the day that Drew Barrymore would became a Park Avenue dame. LOL

Anonymous said...

I won't dance, don't ask me!

Anonymous said...

LOURVE this lay out Mama - and I'm with you on the Dining/Library combo! As to the others that continue to insult our beloved Mama - WTF are you on here for??!! So annoying...munhc love Mama :)

Anonymous said...

How are these New York avenues differentiated by what sort of people live where? I. e. you know who lives in the 7th arrondissement in Paris and you know who lives in the 16th. Is there such a thing that can be applied to New York?

Anonymous said...

^^^

Upper East Side:

(a) Park Avenue - Stuffy old money or striving wannabe old money.

(b) Fifth Avenue - Same, but a bit more glamorous, more glitzy (international) set.

Midtown: Billionaires who live in glass towers who would never pass the co-op review boards, but probably have no interest in living in the older buildings on the Upper East Side anyway. They like the new skyscraper buildings. Particularly on 57th street where there are already several sales in the $95-$100mm range for buildings that haven't even been completed. One57, 432 Park Avenue, and a few others going up.

Upper West Side: Wealthy but more more liberal activist wealthy, more down to earth vs the Upper East Side

Downtown: Young rich people, trust fund kids, wealthy eurotrash, celebrities, wannabe bohemians.

Anonymous said...

How very wonderful of you!

Thank you so much, A 9:52 A;!

:)

Anonymous said...

What's up with all the Navy Federal Credit Union ads on every picture...very annoying.

Sandpiper said...



The millwork's a treat. It's spacious and bright, and flows well. Unless it's needed as a pied-à-terre, I agree with Mama on the bitsy kitchen. Designed for carry-outs is my guess -- but easy enough to enlarge. It's all good!

Curbed says another unit there, 7/8A, is available for the first time in about 50 years. Must be the original floor plan. Needs work, but fun peruse.

NYCSMF said...

Bizarre floor plan. The minuscule entry and the fact that you must walk through the kitchen to access the dining room are dead give-aways that this is reconfigured mess. Nicely finished though.