Real Estate Round Up: Peter Thiel

BUYER: Peter Thiel
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $11,500,000
SIZE: 5,870 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms*

* as per public property records

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We suggest the children snatch up a snack, pour out a few fingers of your favorite hooch and buckle in for the long haul because Your Mama's feeling a wee bit long-winded today. Okay? Ready? 3, 2, 1...

It doesn't take a silly (celebrity) real estate blog maven to tell the children that billionaires are different than regular people. While regular folks sweat blood, tears and financial fear over five dollar a gallon gas and worry about whether they're going to have to eat cat food in their dotage, billionaires can and regularly do drop fat dimes on multi-million dollar high-maintenance residences around the globe. Simmer down fire breathers, we're not making a statement, we're just stating the obvious.

One such financially fortunate billionaire is German-born and San Francisco-based tech-tycoon, venture-capitalist and hedge fund manager Peter Thiel who has been on a bit of a real estate tear the last couple of years; By Your Mama's faux-forensic research and rudimentary calculations Mister Thiel has coughed up close to fifty million clams over the last couple of years on at least three new private residences that include a double wide mansion San Francisco's Marina District, an ocean front spread on Maui (HI), and, most recently, we hear through the real estate gossip grapevine, a high-style mansion perched on a prominent promontory just above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles (CA).

He may not be a household name in a Hollywood sort of way but make no mistake puppeenuh-weenuhs, Mister Thiel's a God damn rock star in the high-powered business and social circles in which he orbits. Mister Thiel, for those who don't know, is the co-founder and former CEO of Pay Pal—he's no longer involved in the day to day there—and a very early investor in the social media supernova Facebook. Mister Thiel's original and exceedingly savvy 2004 angel investment of $500,000 in Facebook was recently reported by the folks at Time to now be worth somewhere around 2.5 billion dollars.

Mister Thiel, in his mid-40s, is an outspoken, occasionally controversial, and politically-minded Libertarian who's ridiculously well-connected in the highest echelons of international affairs; He's listed as a member of the Steering Committee of the somewhat secretive Bilderberg Group. Given the Bilderberg Group's near total, (in)famous and conspiracy-creating media black out, his eponymous foundation kind of ironically gave a less then $500 donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that promotes and defends "the rights of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal."

In addition to his fast moving business enterprises, Mister Thiel offers notable philanthropic support of a number of idiosyncratic, somewhat esoteric and arguably even eccentric organizations such as The Methuselah Foundation that supports anti-aging research and the thrillingly ambitious and wildly out-of-the-box Seasteading Institute. In 2010 he controversially set up a fellowship that offers 20 people under the age of 20  $100,000 (apiece) if they would drop out of college and pursue their own start ups. At least some of the budding entrepreneurs live in a San Francisco mansion called The Glint.

Anyhoo, according to two sources—let's call them Little Boy Blue and Henrietta Hasthedish—Mister Thiel recently and quite quietly dropped $11,500,000 for the approximately 6,000 square foot, multi-wing sprawler on a 1.23 mostly flat acre lot just above Los Angeles' iconic Sunset Strip. The now-modified original residence was designed and custom built in the mid-1950s by revered architect Paul Revere Williams for Russian-born vaudevillian turned legendary restaurateur Dave Chasen and his wife Maude.

In case y'all don't know, L.A.-based Mister Williams was a rarity in his field in that he was black at a time when there just weren't that many black architects and certainly not a lot (if any) black architects who designed both traditional and contemporary private homes for a long list of rich and famous Showbizzers such as Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Lahr, and the magnificently-named Zasu Pitts. In the mid-1930s the in-demand architect was commissioned by hedonistic cigar mogul Jay Paley to design a monumental, modern-minded Georgian Colonial mansion in Bel Air's Holmby Hills nowadays owned by Paris Hilton's hotel magnate grandaddy Barron.

Indeed, as happens with time, many of the many dozens of Paul R. Williams-designed homes in southern California have been raped, pillaged and/or razed by subsequent owners. Those that aren't—as well as those that have been respectfully altered—are still much coveted amongst affluent Angelenos who cotton to their understated elegance and proper proportions.

The Chasen house above the Sunset Strip was designed to meander across mostly flat hillside parcel accessible by two gated entries from two separate streets. Although we can't confirm it still exists, according to Henrietta Hasthedish, the house was originally designed with an oval entrance hall contained just a few but very large rooms with commanding views across the twinkling lights of Tinseltown from downtown to, on a clear day, the Pacific Ocean. The Paul Revere Williams Project website describes the original residence far more succinctly than Your Mama ever could:

"The open floor-plan, multiple levels, interesting angles, curved walls, beamed ceilings and native materials such as hand-split cedar shakes and Palos Verdes stone inside and out gave the home a modern California feel."

The Chasen house was owned for a spell in the 1990s by a now-deceased gentleman who—so tongue-wagged Henrietta Hasthedish—hailed from a prominent farm family and sometimes hosted "naked pool parties" in the backyard. Henrietta went on to tell Your Mama this Diener fella added a two-story wing off the west side of the house.

The Chasen residence passed through several hands and was eventually acquired in 2002 by Larry Schnur and Beverly Schnur, respectively a financier turned race car driver and a former decorating editor at House Beautiful magazine. The couple paid, according to property records $4,500,000 for the out-and-out trophy property that the Los Angeles County Tax Man shows spans 5,870 square feet and contains 4 bedroom and 5 bathrooms, numbers that may or may not be an accurate reflection of the current size and etc. of the home.

The Schnurs, as per a 2004 article in—you got it—House Beautiful, hired L.A. and Santa Barbara-based nice-gay interior decorator-designers Neil Korpinen and Rick Erickson to give the old girl a face lift. Like the house's original celeb-favored architect, Misters Korpinen and Erickson had previously done over homes for a number other high-profile peeps including bawdy entertainer Bette Midler, stage and silver screen actor Nathan Lane, L.A.-based billionaire art patron Eli Broad, and curly-haired clarinetist Kenny G.

Mister Korpinen and Erickson maintained many of Mister Williams' architectural swoops and flourishes but at the request of Mister and Missus Schnur infused the expansive interiors with the Hawaiian spirit of aloha that includes a whole lot vintage rattan furniture, grass cloth and vibrant tropical colors. The indoor areas transition to the outdoors with a Hawaiian style lanai—otherwise known to Mainlanders as a covered porch—that steps down to a prairie-sized sunbathing and entertaining terrace, swimming pool, spa. Beyond the swimming pool a low-profile rock wall rings a semi-circular grass pad that projects into the horizon where a (long ago removed) pool house once stood and obstructed the powerful city views.

Rumor has it the Schnurs recently went splitsville and quietly made their supremely sited residence above the Sunset Strip available for purchase through one of Los Angeles' most successful and well-connected real estate agents.

Property records do indeed reflect a recent transaction recorded in mid-February 2012 that transferred the property from Mister Schnur to a San Francisco-based limited liability company with an address—the children may or may not care to know—directly across the street from a magnificent Art Deco tower Your Mama once upon a lifetime ago called home. None of our regular online resources reflect a purchase price but both Henrietta Hasthedish and Little Boy Blue both told us the highly desirable property went for around $11,000,000.

As far as Your Mama knows—which is really so very little—this is the first house in Los Angeles owned by Mister Thiel who has lived primarily in San Francisco since at least the early Aughts when he purchased two adjoining penthouse apartments atop the Four Seasons Residences of San Francisco for an undisclosed amount of moolah. Property records indicate he sold off his fancy Four Seasons penthouse(s) in October 2005 for $6,500,000.

We're not quite sure of his real estate whereabouts for the next few years but in early September 2009 a 4-story mansion in San Francisco's Marina District—a bulky combination of two side-by-side houses—popped up on the open market with an asking price of $8,180,000. Within six weeks the price dropped to $7,400,000 and in mid-January 2010 the mansion was sold to a limited liability concern connected to Mister Thiel for, according to the property records we peeped, $6,500,000.

Listing information from the time of the sale describes the 7,000-plus square foot beast of an urban mansion (rear exterior and roof terrace shown above) as a "passionate and intelligent work of world-renowned architect/builders, Remick Associates" with 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, and a 2-car attached garage with direct entry. The interior spaces where then finished with, again according to listing information from the time of the purchase, "White onyx panels, figured and quartered hard woods, marble, cast and hand blown glass, granite and pear wood."

Mister Thiel, according to the California Markt website, subsequently had the whole place worked over by Fog City-based decorator and Gilt Groupe executive Shane Reilly. The classic, 1940s Marina-style exteriors embrace a more modern vibe inside and includes, according to California Markt article, a living room that works for both intimate and grand scale entertaining, two dining rooms, a private office that adjoins the master suite, and a roof top pavilion with marble-faced fireplace. A massive roof terrace offers dead on and couldn't-be-closer view of the Beaux Art-style Palace of Fine Arts on one side and a wind-screen shielded view on the other of the vermilion towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Mid-summer last (2011) it was widely reported by international property gossips that Mister Thiel, through a Delaware-based limited liability corporation, paid an toe-curling $27,000,000 to add a 1.69-acre, ocean front spread near Kihei on the Hawaiian island of Maui to his really-beginning-to-bulge property portfolio. The Ahihi Bay-fronting real estate paradise (above) was not listed on the open market and was sold by a man described in various press accounts of the transaction as a "Wyoming rancher" and the founder of Huish Detergents, a private-label laundry- and dish-product maker.

The gated residence, a quartet of interconnected pavilions, curls around a tropically landscaped courtyard with land-side swimming pool on one side and opens on the ocean side to to a foliage-ringed flat lawn that wraps around the house. Of course, we've never set foot on the property but can imagine the views are beyond delicious from the private, peninsula setting that juts ever-so slightly out into the bay. The house, according to property records available online, measures in at 4,735 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, all numbers that may or may not be an accurate reflection of the houses actual size and etc.

As it turns out Mister Thiel's Hawaiian hideaway is just a half mile up the road from the ocean front residence scooped up by Aerosmith front man and American Idol judge Steven Tyler in late 2011 for $4,800,000.

In addition to his homes in San Francisco, Hawaii and now Los Angeles, Mister Thiel also maintains a New York City rental residence located in a renovated 19th century building—once the headquarters of Tiffany & Co.—now sheathed in a slick, smoked glass curtain that both shields and reveals the building's original fenestration and architectural details. Previous reports on Mister Thiel's residency in the building that looms over the western edge of always bustling Union Square describes the rented pied a terre as having 16-foot ceilings, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, custom finishes by famous interior designer Vicente Wolf, and "sweeping views" over the tree-tops of Union Square. He's said to be paying $25,000 for the apartment (shown above) but—use yer noggin's butter beans—we certainly can't confirm that figure.

Mister Thiel, for anyone who thinks it might matter, is an out gay man well known amongst a certain set for throwing glitzy "soirees" with, an anonymous source told The Daily News last year, food and cocktail servers in "assless chaps." Last summer, again according to The Daily News, Mister Thiel hosted an evening get together at his Union Square aerie with a "not-so-hot shirtless bartender"where a gaggle of party goers got stuck in the elevator on their way out in the early morning hours. This was not, we're pretty sure, the same summertime shindig during which right wing sassy pants Ann Coulter brazenly and fearlessly slammed gay rights and equality during a speech to a roomful of mostly gay men in attendance to commemorate of the one-year anniversary of GOProud, an advocacy group for gay conservatives.

 Since Mister Thiel likes to throw (sometimes crazy) parties and host events for causes he cares about and his new house in Los Angeles has an alleged history of naked pool parties Your Mama expects (and hopes) it's only a short matter of time before some of our more a-list homo pals and acquaintances will soon have yarns to spin about the doings up at Mister Thiel's fab new party pad above the Sunset Strip.

aerial photo (Los Angeles): Bing
listing photos (San Francisco): Pacific Union International via Redfin
aerial photo (Hawaii): Steve Strand via Pacific Business News
listing photos (New York): Stribling via The Jane Dough

Michael Phelps Flipping in Fells Point

SELLER: Michael Phelps
LOCATION: Baltimore, MD
PRICE: somewhere between $1,075,000 and $1,475,000
SIZE: 4,080 square feet, bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A week or so ago we received a covert communique from an industrious young man we'll call Balamer O. Riole who alerted Your Mama that record breaking Olympic super-swimmer Michael Phelps had quietly made his mini-mansion-sized waterfront condominium in Baltimore, MD available for purchase with an unspecified asking price.

No offense to anyone intended, especially to Mister Riole who did most of our property record legwork for us, but Your Mama promptly forgot the matter until yesterday when we stumbled across of a 2009 photograph of a handle-bar mustachioed Mister Phelps and wondered aloud, "Well, who's that daddy?"

Anyone who knows Your Mama knows—in the main—we know as much about sports as we do about astrophysics, which isn't much more than knowing how to spell the words. We do know, however, a thing or two about Michael Phelps, the long and lithe Baltimore Bullet who rose to athletic fame during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens—that's Athens Greece, puppies, not Athens, GA—when he stroked his way to six gold and two bronze metals. In 2008 the 6-foot 4-inch aquatic phenom launched into international super stardom when he took home 8 more gold medals from the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing. That's in China, dolls.

Property records show the still competing and oft-winning ambi-stroker—who plans to snag a few more medals from the upcoming 2012 Olympics in London—scooped up his four-floor townhouse in October 2007 for $1,699,900. The townhouse, one of a dozen or so similar (or maybe even identical) townhouses in a semi-separate enclave of a large residential apartment complex called The Crescent at Fells Point, sits directly on a quiet finger of Baltimore's busy harbor in the historic and charming Fells Point neighborhood.

As far as we can surmise, the red brick, steel and glass contemporary condo isn't on the open market but—as of today—a listing does indeed appear on the website of a local real estate agent who Mister Riole described as the "indisputable...doyenne of Maryland's most expensive real estate."

The asking price for Mister Phelps' condo shows as by request only on the agent's website where the listing sits between a pair of properties listed at $1,075,000 and $1,475,000 respectively. Common real estate sense tells Your Mama this placement puts the asking price of Mister Phelps' Fells Point pad somewhere between those two amounts. Of course, we could be absolutely, dead wrong.

Should our entirely unscientific and possibly inaccurate assessment of Mister Phelps' asking price be at all on point—and we really can't stress enough that we could be wrong as a chicken wearing lipstick—it would appear that Mister Phelps is prepared to lose a couple to several hundred thousand dollars on the sale of his big ol' Bawlamore bachelor pad.

Listing information is somewhat slender but does indicate there's a two-car ground floor garage and a total of 3 bedrooms and 3 full and 2 half bathrooms spread throughout the suburban house-sized, townhouse-type residence that property records peg at 4,080 square feet.

 A zig-zagging wood and steel staircase winds geometrically from top to bottom and connects all flour floors (plus roof top terrace) of the vertical living space that does not—as far as we know or can surmise from the limited listing information—have an elevator rendering it a pretty negligible option for the glutially weak and/or lazy.

Honey-colored hardwood floors stretch throughout the loft-like main level living/dining area that includes an awkward two-sided fireplace with some sort of too-pedestrian flecked granite surround and a tee-vee nook with curving back wall tiled floor-to-ceiling with a bold and completely unexpected mottled orange tile. A commercial style glass door opens to a small balcony that overlooks a landscaped promenade and bustling marina.

The hardwood floors—regrettably by our meaningless opinion—turn to some sort of (probably expensive) tile in the eat in kitchen that adjoins the dining area. A large center island has a cook top with grill and breakfast bar. The raised panel cabinets are of unknown material that looks like mahogany, the counter tops granite and the appliances perfectly acceptable mid-grade stainless steel.

A built-in housekeeping desk set into a window-lined bay hangs over the driveway with a fairly up close view of the adjacent apartment building and the breakfast area has a wide, floor-to-ceiling window with oblique and obstructed views of the harbor.

In addition to the two guest/family/flexi-use bedrooms listing information indicates there's a "luxe master suite with spa bath," which we're guessing is the one shown in listing photos with an over-sized oval soaking tub, frosted glass shower and crapper enclosures, and granite-topped sink and vanity spaces.

The gravity defying staircase ascends to a small roof top pavilion that gives access to a tiled, wrap-around roof terrace with easy-maintenance planter boxes, panoramic marina, harbor and city views and, it appears in listing photos, a hot tub that may or may not be visible to one or more neighbors.

Naturally Your Mama hasn't a clue why Mister Phelps would be willing to sell his townhouse at what would appear to be a significant loss but our tattletale Mister Riole told us that word on the suburban Baltimore real estate street is Mister Phelps has a been known to house hunt in Baltimore's upscale suburbs and—again according to Mister Riole—showed some interest last summer in this massive, nearly all-glass mansion on its own private peninsula in Pasadena, MD. T

Mister Riole also suggested Mister Phelps might reasonably like to relocate to the ritzy Ritz-Carlton Residences on Baltimore's Inner Harbor where his mother Debbie recently acquired a two bedroom garden apartment described as glitzy and dramatic and sitting so close to the harbor, "its easy waves could almost lap up onto her patio."

listing photos: Krauss Real Property Brokerage

More New York City Floor Plan Porn: Christopher M. Jeffries

SELLER: Christopher M. Jeffries
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $77,500,000 (Yes, puppies, that's correct. It's really listed at $77,500,000)
SIZE: 10,882 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While property gossips around the world were going ape shit yesterday over the official listings and floor plans for late (and famously reclusive) copper heiress Huguette Clark's three sprawling co-operative apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue, real estate developer Christopher M. Jeffries (not entirely) quietly slipped his monumental Manhattan duplex condominium on the market with a positively bone-chilling price tag of $77,500,000.

Mister Jeffries, married for a few years to Princess Yasmin Aga Khan in the early 1990s, founded Millennium Partners in order to—as per Millennium's website—"pioneer a new concept in mixed-use, urban living and entertainment centers." He teamed up with both the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company to develop luxury projects and has clearly been enormously successful.

Mister Jeffries acquired his humongous urban aerie, according to The New York Times, in 2002 for $20,000,000 and the current asking price makes it the most expensive condominium currently on the open market in New York City. While the stratospheric asking price certainly makes Your Mama gasp, guffaw and stomp our feet with flabbergast, it's probably not so out of the ball park given that Russian bajillionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev recently dropped $88,000,000 on retired financier Sanford 'Sandy' Weill's significantly smaller—but no less jaw dropping—penthouse atop supah-swank 15 Central Park West.

15 Central Park West—it and its sardine-like crush of freakishly rich and powerful residents the juicy subject of Michael Gross' next tome—may get most of the glory in the real estate media but the lesser ballyhooed, comparatively discreet and far more boutique-y dozen-unit Ritz-Carlton Residences on Central Park South ain't exactly real estate chopped liver, children.

StreetEasy shows only five of the lavishly large condos have changed hands in the last five years and Your Mama's rudimentary calculations show a hefty-hefty-hefty five-year average sale price of $24,750,000. The astronomical monthlies provide residents with the 5-star services of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel that occupies the first 20 or so floors of building that stands directly across the street from the southern edge of Central Park.

The 23rd floor unit—9,455 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms—sold in the early days of 2007 for $29,500,000 and carried with it common charges and taxes, as per listing information from the time, that totaled $23,351 per month. As ear-piercingly high as that sounds (and is), it pales in comparison to the super-jumbo $29,651 in taxes and common charges due each month on Mister Jefferies' mcmansion-sized condo. That, children, is a heart-stopping $355,812 a year just to keep your key turning in the lock.

At 10,882 square feet, the vast, u-shaped mansion in the sky encompasses the entire 30th and 31st floors of the polished Art Deco tower with 26 park-facing windows and an 80-foot wide terrace that provide the exact sort of sweeping views over Central Park of which the New York City real estate dreams of the mega-rich are woven.

The main entrance and public rooms on the upper level include a brazenly capacious, nearly thousand square foot living room with mahogany-colored wood floors (that may or may not actually be mahogany), a regimented quintet of arched windows with big park view and terrace access, and a soaring, 15-foot gold-leafed coffered ceiling. There are two fireplaces, one at each end of the nearly 45-foot long room done up in a decidedly traditional, medium-level fussy day-core with lustrous jewel-toned fabrics, glittery crystal chandeliers—probably antiques and more than likely shockingly costly—and a lot of very expensive- and authentic-looking Chinoserie things.

The east wing of the upper level contains an intimately-scaled media room with park view and built-in entertainment cabinet as well as a "display room" for displaying museum quality trinkets and tchotchke, and a nearly 500-square foot library with built-in book cases and open city views to the south. Deep walk-in closets and storage areas plus a wonderfully private half bathroom complete the wing.

The upper level's west wing stretches back from the foyer and includes an airy formal dining room with eight windows on three sides, a fireplace on the fourth wall, and direct access to a fairly narrow west facing terrace with city and oblique park views. The adjacent, almost 35-foot long, suburban mansion-sized kitchen—no doubt a state-of-the-art culinary tour-de-force—has seven windows with park and city views and an adjoining, compactly cozy breakfast room that opens out to the aforementioned 80-foot wide terrace that runs along the north side of the apartment and practically hangs over Central Park.

Technically, the hulking apartment has four bedrooms but a quick study of the floor plan reveals two of them, both with en suite facilities, are quite small and tucked less than optimally into the back of the condo's lower level, opposite the bedroom-sized laundry room. A third, much more amply proportioned guest bedroom just off the lower level foyer/sitting room has direct park views and an attached bathroom but does not have—as far as we can see from per the floor plan—a closet.

The (possible) lack of closet space in the guest bedroom is more than made up for in the approximately 3,000 square foot master suite that consumes the entire east wing of the duplex's lower level and includes a 25-foot long entry gallery, a behemoth bedroom with fireplace and panoramic city and park views, his and her (park view) bathrooms and his and her custom-fitted dressing rooms.

His dressing room has a separate walk-in closet and direct park view and her 800 (or so) square foot, multi-room boo-dwar features a wee fitness room, a colossal, custom fitted dressing room with all kinds of built-in nooks and crannies for shoes, handbags and what-have-yous, and at the very rear of the exceptionally spacious space, a closet-lined sitting room with built in desk and open city views to the south.

Your Mama might suggest the next owner drop in an essentially hidden and tightly coiled staircase in the over-sized storage closet off the upper level's east wing corridor that directly connects to the lady's dressing room on the lower level.

The gigantic duplex, as it turns out, is not the only unit at the Ritz-Carlton Residences on Central Park South Mister Jeffries has owned. Our research turned up some 411 that clearly indicates the real estate tycoon purchased the 5,954 square foot, full floor simplex unit directly below his 30th and 31st floor duplex in December 2005 for $16,292,000 that he turned around and sold in July 2008 for $28,500,000. Taxes and common charges totaled $17,740 at that time of the 2008 sale.

The 29th floor sprawler, according to listing information from the time, has 3-4 bedrooms—including an approx. 1,500 square foot master suite, a total of 4 bathrooms, and 3 terraces—two that directly face Central Park. The buyer was hedge fund honcho Scott Bommer—a man well-known by New York real estateophiles for his exorbitantly high-priced real estate purchases—who re-sold the property in August 2011 for $30,000,000 to mysterious corporate entity with a Miami, FL address.

Like many wealthy Manhattanites, Mister Jeffries also owns a substantial estate in the Hamptons. Property records show since at least the late 1990s he's owned a fully-landscaped 5.5 acre spread directly across the street from Rick and Kathy Hilton's Hamptons hideaway in the exclusive (but not oceanfront) Fordune enclave. The Suffolk County Tax Man confirms for Your Mama that Mister Jeffries is a bit of a real estate size queen: the main house of his Southampton spread measures  a very considerable 14,685 square feet with 9 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms. The property, gated and entirely tree-ringed for privacy, includes additional living space that adjoins the detached three-bay garage, a party-sized motor court, tennis court with viewing pavilion, and swimming pool complex with spa, extensive sunbathing terraces, and poolside cabana.

This is not, it may or may not surprise the children to learn, the first mansion in Fordune Mister Jeffries has owned. In early 2000 he sold a smaller estate next door to his current house that public property records reveal spreads out over 3.13 acres and includes a 7,037 square foot mansion, tennis court, and swimming pool.

interior and view photos and floor plan (NYC): Brown Harris Stevens
aerial image: Bing

Floor Plan Porn: Hugette Clark

They're here...official listings the floor plans for all three of Huguette Clark's apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue.

Apartment 8E has 12 rooms, faces East 72nd Street—and not Central Park, an asking price of $12,000,000, and $7,756 monthly co-operative common charges and maintenance fees according to listing information.

An almost ludicrously grand 47-plus foot long reception gallery and a discreet service corridor link the two wings of the approximately 5,000 square foot spread that includes six—six!—public rooms: entrance gallery, reception room, formal living and dining rooms, library, and small conservatory/solarium.

The floor plans shows three fireplaces (living, dining, library), two principal bedrooms, three surprisingly spacious staff rooms and a real damn dearth of bathrooms for an apartment of this magnitude and price. Our boozy eyeballs count just one shared facility in the service wing and another wedged Jack-and-Jill-style between the two bedrooms. In it's current configuration, a guest must tinkle where the staff squats or traipse through one of the bedrooms in order to wash their hands or do their dirty business.

The adjacent eight floor apartment—that would be 8W—has 10 rooms, carries a $19,000,000 price tag, and claims more than 100 precious feet of Fifth Avenue frontage with direct Central Park Views. Maintenance and common charges for the unit run $8,167 according to listing information.

The floor plan reveals a 37-plus foot long entrance gallery (with adjoining powder room and wet bar), a 400-plus square foot living room with fireplace, a library/bedroom also with fireplace plus a private bath, and an unexpectedly small formal dining room and, for an apartment this size, a positively puny kitchen.

A humongous park view master suite includes a private entry vestibule, a 400-plus square foot sitting room, three walk-in closets, two (windowed) bathrooms, and corner bedroom with corner fireplace and what appears to be a wet bar, the perfect amenity for late night and early morning tippers like Your Mama.

Staff accommodations in 8W include a double-wide bedroom with access to a hall bathroom and another usually generous at the extreme rear of the apartment with direct access to a private (and windowed) bathrooms.

Separately the 8th floor apartments are both—quirks and all—extraordinarily spacious for New York City. A combined, full-floor residence—should the board allow it—would be beyond epic and likely worth much more than the current combined asking price of $31,000,000.

Up on the twelfth floor, where Miz Clark lived in the 1920s—she eventually remodeled and moved to 8W—spreads out over 5,000 square feet with 14 rooms, has more than 100 feet of Fifth Avenue and Central Park frontage, and currently carries an asking price of $24,000,000. Monthly maintenance runs, according to listing information, $14,382.

Like both of her 8th floor apartments, 12W also has a bowling alley-like entrance gallery, a 400-plus square foot living room with fireplace, and a formal dining room (also with fireplace). The New York Times reported, "Many of the rooms were decorated in ornate Louis XVI style" and listing information states there are 11-foot ceilings, stone door surrounds, linen-fold panel doors, herringbone pattern hardwood floors, and ornate, Louis XVI-style moldings.

Two of the four rooms labeled as bedrooms on the floor plan have private (windowed) bathrooms—one bedroom with corner fireplace—and the two other bedrooms—one with fireplace and private sitting room—share a (windowed) Jack-and-Jill-type of bathroom. There's an additional sitting room off the long bedroom corridor and a small study just off the entrance gallery.

The service areas include an L-shaped pantry, kitchen, breakfast room (with service entrance) and three prison cell-sized staff bedrooms that share one (windowed) bathroom.

Now that they're out there on the open market we suspect there will be a swarm of interested parties. Anyone willing to predict how quickly (or slowly) they'll sell and at what prices?

Many thanks to all the childre—who know who you are—who sent Your Mama links to the listings and the various updated reports on the matter.

floor plans: Brown Harris Stevens