Triple flip try at 15 CPW
Tyler Alexandra Ellis, daughter of the late fashion legend Perry Ellis and TV writer-producer Barbara Gallagher, and designer of Tyler Alexandra handbags, has listed her palatial A-line apartment at Fifteen Central Park West for $31 million, nearly three times its original purchase price, says the Wall Street Journal. Ellis’ truly astonishing story is told for […]
Grazing the news for Gripepad obsessions
Noted without comment: The last few days have seen several of Gripepad’s obsessions flitting hither and yon in the news. Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour , who appears on the cover of Rogues’ Gallery, has been rewarded for her fundraising and cheerleading efforts on behalf of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute with […]
A departure for Departures
The cover of the January-February issue of Departures, touting this reporter’s story on the race to sell New York City’s first $100 million condo sale, has inspired an article in Luxury Marketing. “I wanted to be a little snarky and subversive, especially as a way to ring in the new year,” Departures’ editor in chief […]
Columbia sells a gem on the ocean
In 2007, Columbia University received the largest-ever gift from an individual–$400 million for financial aid–from one of its alums, telecommunication mogul, John Kluge. Part of that gift was Kluge’s Palm Beach estate, Casa Sin Nombre or House Without a Name–an extraordinary assemblage of historic properties in one of the resort town’s best sections. The history […]
The pause that refreshes
Gripepad is taking a week off. See you in 2014.
Xmas Scrooge Alert: Tips and the Iceberg Rich
Today’s New York Post has a laugh-riot story by Jane Ridley on Christmas staff tipping rituals in better buildings like 740 Park and 15 Central Park West. Read it and remember, they know if you’ve been bad or good so you better tip good for goodness sake!
Edgar Bronfman, RIP
Seagrams heir Edgar Bronfman, second owner of the triplex penthouse atop 740 Park built for Elecrta Havemeyer and J. Watson Webb, and now occupied by for United Technologies head George David, has died at age 84. He paid $235,000 for the massive spread in 1961, and still owned it when his son Sam was famously […]
NYC real estate reaches for nine figures
In today’s New York Post, real estate editor David Kaufman offered a sneak peek at my cover story in the January/February issue of Departures, “The Hunt for the $100 Million Apartment,” on the race by real estate developers to jump that nine-figure hurdle. The starting gun, of course, was Sandy Weill‘s sale of his penthouse […]
“Well-told…full of both contempt and admiration…overindulgence…irony…”
Publisher’s Weekly just issued its advance review of House of Outrageous Fortune: “Gross takes a building, Fifteen Central Park West, and uses it to describe the face-off between exclusive co-ops and democratic condos, and between the old families of the Upper East Side and upstarts moving into the Upper West Side,” it says in part. […]
Bob Diamond: Out of 15CPW, into Africa
Robert Diamond, the former head of Barclay’s, ousted due to the LIBOR rate-fixing scandal, licks his wounds in a penthouse at Fifteen Central Park West, as first revealed by this writer in Newsweek last January, but according to a Reuters story today, he’s hungering for a comeback….in African banking. “He has made no secret of […]