Monday, September 24, 2012

Another $95 Million Manhattan Spread Up for Grabs

SELLERS: Gilbert and Charlene Haroche
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $95,000,000
SIZE: 7,000-ish square feet, 7 bedrooms, 7 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Over the weekend, with much fanfare and hullabaloo, the property gossips at the New York Times gleefully revealed that Liberty Travel co-founder Gilbert Haroche and wife Charlene heaved their grand(iose) full-floor residence at the legendary and legendarily high-nosed Sherry-Netherland building on New York City's Fifth Avenue on the open market with a publicity generating $95,000,000 price tag.

It's not clear (or reported) exactly when Mister and Missus Haroche purchased their sprawling Fifth Avenue aerie, but The New York Times did say they spent about two years on an extensive renovation that combined several 18th floor apartments into a single sprawler with approximately 7,000 square feet of voluptuous interior space and another 2,000-or-so square feet of elegantly planted terraces.

A trio of attended elevators open into a gilt-trimmed private landing with intricate mosaic tile floor that sumptuously shuttles residents and guests into a roomy formal living room outfitted with inlaid parquet floors and a wood-burning fireplace, not to mention tassel-trimmed draperies, champagne colored sofas, and a burled wood baby grand piano that Your Mama would bet our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, cost the spendy couple more than a well-equipped Mercedes-Benz.

Additional public and semi-private spaces include a stiff-lipped formal dining room with Midtown views, a window-lined corner solarium with direct view of the Central Park and the Plaza Hotel plus a library with even more inlaid parquet floors and high-gloss mahogany paneled walls and built-in wet bar.

The suburban mini-mansion-sized eat-in kitchen is expensively equipped with a large center island, bone-colored cabinetry with mottled gray slab granite counter tops and all the over-sized, commercial-style appliances—including a pair fridge/freezers and warming ovens—that one can and should expect in any home anywhere with a $95,000,000 price tag. Both the formal dining room and the kitchen overlook a south-facing terrace with an unobstructed (if oblique), multi-million dollar view of The Plaza and the towers of Midtown.

Current listing information, and recent, tongue-wagging reports, about Haroche's decision to sell report the 15-room residence contains a total of 7 bedrooms with 7 full and 2 half bathrooms including a two-bedroom and two-bathroom guest suite with a small kitchen. The royalty-worthy master suite, accessed by a bowling-alley-length closet-lined corridor, features dual bathrooms and dressing rooms—one fully-lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrored cabinets—plus a private, north-facing terrace with skyline views of Upper East Side and Central Park. Two additional staff suites on separate floors allow residents and live-in domestics an unusual and highly desirable amount of privacy.

Living at the Sherry-Netherland is described in current marketing materials for Mister and Missus Haroche's palatial apartment as "an expression of privilege since 1927," and privileged living comes—natch—at an almost unimaginable sky-high price. A few quick flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus determined the maintenance charges run a throat-constricting $648,000 per year, based on the approximately $54,000 per month figure reported in The New York Times.

Your Mama's rudimentary—and entirely unscientific—calculations indicate it would take a New York state minimum wage worker who earns $7.25 per hour almost 45 years to pay just one year of Mister and Missus Haroche's mind-altering maintenance fees. Mix a stiff gin & tonic and take a moment to ponder that, kittens, because it's really quite extraordinary.

Anyhoo, the gargantuan monthly fees cover the owner's share of building's property taxes plus access to all of The Sherry's elegant, five-star hotel amenities and services that include twice-a-day housekeeping and turn down service, 24-hour concierge, access to the swish private club Doubles (located in the basement) and room service—for additional fees, natch—available on demand from the swank Harry Cipriani restaurant located in the building's lobby. What the fees do not include, as far as we can tell, is access to a fitness facility, so any of the sportier billionaires who might consider the purchase of this apartment will also need to lay out a few more pennies for a gym membership.

Your Mama don't know a palm tree from a swimming pool but it seems to us that Mister and Missus Haroche might be wearing rose-tinted real estate glasses. The next most expensive apartment currently available on the open market at The Sherry is a spacious, U-shaped two-unit spread on the 16th floor listed as unfinished space for a $19,500,000. The Sherry-Netherland is unquestionably a supremely swank and impressive place to live or maintain a multi-million dollar pied a terre and the Haroche's apartment is undeniably rare in its magnitude and location, even for New York City, but, the highest recorded price paid for an apartment in the building since the middle of 2004—according to the record keepers at StreetEasy—is $11,100,000, in March 2011, for an 8-room corner residence on the third floor with three bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms plus a windowless, cell-sized staff room with attached bathroom, an almost preposterously puny kitchen, two fireplaces and monthly maintenance fees of just over eighteen grand.

Then again, there have been several jaw-dropping purchases of condos the last year or so in New York City including a $70,000,000 duplex penthouse atop the Ritz-Carlton scooped up by gambling honcho Steve Wynn and an $88,000,000 simplex penthouse at 15 Central Park West picked up by Russian multi-billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. However, to date, as far as Your Mama knows, the most expensive co-operative apartment to ever change hands happened earlier this year for $52,500,000, a situation that makes the Haroche's sky-high asking price seem a little rose-tinted. But then again, what do we know?

Well-heeled current and past residents of The Sherry are rumored and reported to include Miss Diana Ross, journalist/talk show host Charlie Rose, Barbra "only from the left side, please" Streisand, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Warner, George Burns, mutual fund billionaire Charles Johnson, scented candle king Harry Slatkin and wife Laura (who now live in an regal and ritzy 19th-century Beaux Arts townhouse on East 74th Street bought in 2005 for $11,720,000 from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Arthur Penn), deceased tech titan turned art/trophy property collector and philanthropist Max Palevsky, fat-cat financier Roberto de Guardiola and his interior designer wife Joanne who reportedly own five contiguous combined units, as well as any number of other potentates, captains of industry and financiers who are so ridiculously rich and discreet that most of the children have never even heard of them.

The Old Grey Lady was invited in to the Haroche's apartment for a tour and took lots more photographs for the children to feast on.

Turns out, this isn't the first time Mister and Missus Haroche have put a $95,000,000 price tag on one of their properties. Back in 2007 and into 2008 they had Hillandale, their 263-or-so acre estate in Stamford, CT, up for sale with the same sky-high price. The estate does not appear to have been sold and it does not appear to be currently listed on the open market.

Hillandale, formerly owned by the illustrious Sulzberger family who own the New York Times, straddles the Connecticut and New York state border and, according to multiple reports from the time, is comprised of a 20,000-or-so square foot stone main mansion with 8 bedrooms, 10 full and 4 half bathrooms, 9 fireplaces, and an indoor pool plus four additional residences. There's also a private chapel built with materials imported from France, an authentic tepee (whatever that is), a private lake, an outdoor swimming pool, tennis court, acres and acres of landscaped grounds that include painstakingly manicured parterre gardens and five-plus miles of private roads.

listing photos (New York City): Brown Harris Stevens and Prudential Douglas Elliman
listing photos (Stamford/Pound Ridge): Sotheby's International Realty via Luxist

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably overpriced, but I love their interior decor! That's true luxury.

Anonymous said...

Where else will you find a $95m apartment with through the wall air conditioning?

Anonymous said...

These are the kind of people that Romney and Ryan worry about. They pay too much in taxes and need relief. The code needs to be changed so that they pay nothing at all on capital gains and dividends according to Ryan. Then they would have enough left to live on in a decent fashion. As it is, they are clearly the victims of the socialists in power in Washington and all the moochers who pay no income taxes at all. If you don't believe me, just read the comments in the Daily Telegraph.

Anonymous said...


So true! We the poor and downtrodden of this world must come to our senses and allow those who have reaped the
bounty of this earth their unfettered and God-given right to limitless acquisition..we must honor the nobiliity of their greed, the dignity of their selfishness, the manifest destiny
of thier imperialism, the savage beauty of thier royal and lordly
thefts.....how good it is to finally take comfort in the knowledge that our suffering will not linger much longer as the last free breath within our worthless lungs is squeezed out by their iron grasp.


Anonymous said...

10:21 but you don't get it, I fear. We don't suffer; we mooch. We get a free ride. It is the people who live in places like this that pay for everything we get. It is so unfair to them after they create all the jobs and make the economy work to the extent it does. Romney and Ryan will stop this robbery and make sure these people don't have to continue to support us with their taxes. We will have to stand on our own feet and take responsibility for ourselves. We need to borrow from our families and start businesses and support ourselves like Romney did. These people are the ones who work hard, not us. They are not squeezing us; we are robbing them.

Anonymous said...

Looks like a nice place! The sky is the limit at the moment in terms of NY real estate valuations. btw, it was widely reported tha the 15 CPW penthouse was bought by Ekaterina Rybolovleva through a trust - not Dmitry

Anonymous said...

Anon 10:50pm... I seriously hope that was a sarcastic joke. If not, then you're full of sh*t.

Love the woodwork craftsmanship in the lounge/whatever room. I'm sure the moochers appreciate the opportunity to oil and care for it otherwise one might mistaken the job as a free ride. Really.

I guess the hardworkers can't scrub their own terlits either. Thanks for the opportunity to clean up your sh*t too.

Anonymous said...

I always heard the Sherry was in bad financial shape. If your going to spend this kind of money buy at the Pierre.
Who knew people still use Travel Agency's. Maybe not and that is why they are selling.

Anonymous said...

Haroche gave money to both Obama AND Hillary (google it)Moron(s).

Anonymous said...

The terrace space is to swoon over. The interiors not so much. Ceilings look very low, and at the end of the day your still living in an old building, with all its faults.

Anonymous said...

Did they mistakenly add an extra zero to the price?

Anonymous said...

I have been in the Sherry a number of times.... the low ceilings...the tiny lobby, the small windows.... but you got Harry down stairs to take care of libations and hunger pains!

Crazy Price... hysterical price... never get it.

For this kind of money (if wanting to live uptown) I would be in a far more luxe building a few blocks up or at 15 CPW. Maintenance Fees are out of control nausiating!

Anonymous said...

For $95 big ones you'd expect sonething more than a typical Alpine, NJ McMansion in the sky. Low ceilings, way too much in the way of Vegas style wall treatments of exotic veneer and marble. We're not buying the furnishings but nothing of any note - upholstering everything in Scalamandre fabric doesn't automatically equal great taste. Very "decorated" and not in a good way. Jill Zarin would love it.

Anonymous said...

Geez, you gotta ask yourself, if I see someone with a fabulous crib and my first reaction is - how do I get me some of their stuff, just what the heck is wrong with you? If you genuinely hate the rich, a) what are you doing reading a blog about their real estate transactions and b) why aren't you living in a nice socialist country like Cuba where there ARE no rich people?

Turbo said...

Disjointed, juxtaposed and eye-searing aesthetics combined with an aging and outdated building. No thanks.

Anonymous said...

Along with many New Yorkers, although apparently not many of Mama's Kinderlach, the Rabbi architecturally worships the Sherry, along with its coffered gallery, vaulted lobby, set-back terraces, tower suites, idolatrous gargoyles, and minaret finial. Given that it is immediately after Yom Kippur, the Rabbi is feeling especially charitable and forgives the Sherry for her low ceilings.

Rabbi Hedda LaTess
Alpine NJ

Unknown said...

If ya'll chickens would like a looky loo at the floor plan porn here it is... http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/09/24/inside_the_sherry_netherlands_new_95_million_listing.php

Unknown said...

If ya'll chickens would like a looky loo at the floor plan porn here it is... http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/09/24/inside_the_sherry_netherlands_new_95_million_listing.php

Anonymous said...

all bedrooms and living rooms....no kitchen?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

7:01. Well it might be feelings of guilt or wish for self punishment. Or perhaps hoping for an exemption from the push for higher taxes on the rich. Seeing how these people live, I think Obama should have demanded a top rate of 70% (as in France) and an additional tax on high end property. When I look at this I can't get out of my mind's eye a picture I recently saw of a young boy sitting on the edge of a street holding his baby sister and crying after having been evicted from his hovel where they lived in Katmandu. Haunting.