In today’s New York Observer, real estate reporter Max Abelson reveals that there are now two — count ’em, 2! — vacant duplexes at the summit of Manhattan real estate, 740 Park Avenue, and calls 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building “a nose-twitching biography of the building.” Janet Coleman, the 89-year-old Mosler Safe heiress (before she moved in, the family company built the building’s basement vaults), died last week. Unfortunately for the real estate community, neither her apartment, nor that of “Harry” Cheng Ching Wang, the designer Vera Wang’s father, has yet come on the market, so buyers-to-be will have to keep their powder dry for now. Also in today’s news, Page Six repeats an inflationary error that many others have made in the past, calling 740 kingpin Steve Schwarzman’s apartment a $37 million triplex. It’s a $29.9 million duplex, but why quibble when you have more rooms than you can count?
UPDATE: Curbed.com chimes in to say that 740 Park is “the most important co-op in the known universe.” No wonder even our best gossip minds are boggled by it!