R.I.P. Alice Mason, 100
I’m quoted in today’s New York Times obituary of Alice Mason, the real estate broker and hostess. For lesser beings like me, an invitation to one of her dinner parties was a signal of, if not acceptance, then a certain achievement. I still recall my thrill when I saw fury in the eyes of the […]
The Russians Are Leaving! The Russians Are Leaving!
The new Fall issue of Park Ave Magazine, out today, features an updated except from House of Outrageous Fortune about the Russian oligarch residents of New York’s Fifteen Central Park West–and what might become of them in the wake of their homeboy Putin’s misadventure in Ukraine. You can read it here.
A Shaded View of Me
I first wrote about Diane Pernet when she was a New York designer in the mid-1980s. Now, she’s a fashion critic, entrepreneur, film festival founder, critic and blogger. Wearing that last hat at A Shaded View Of Fashion, she’s just posted a lengthy interview with me, looking both backward (I recall some of my favorite […]
R.I.P. Ranan Lurie of 15CPW
Ranan Laurie (pictured), an Israeli war hero, the world’s most-syndicated political cartoonist, and a direct descendant of the Bible’s Prophet Isaiah, who died Wednesday at 90 in Las Vegas, was also a hero of mine. While others at Fifteen Central Park West who’d given me interviews for House of Outrageous Fortune, my book on the […]
Herb Sukenik Lives!
In 2014, House of Outrageous Fortune broke the astonishing story of how an unemployed 73-year-old genius, a reclusive tenant at the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West, held out against eviction by the prospective developers of the luxury condo Fifteen Central Park West–until he got a $17 million payoff to move–and a free apartment at […]
And speaking of Russian oligarchs, this one owns Ford Models
This Gripepad post from March 3rd is featured in tomorrow’s Richard Johnson column in the Daily News : Why is this man smiling? It’s certainly a rough patch for Russian billionaire oligarch Vladimir Potanin (pictured), pal of the war-mongering Vladimir Putain, according to the U.S. Treasury’s 2018 “Putin list,” naming 210 Russian oligarchs with close ties to […]
Flipping Out
Will Lie Zeckendorf, co-developer with his brother Arthur Zeckendorf of 15 Central Park West, and former owner of apartments there, in the Majestic on Central Park West, and in 740 Park Avenue, has flipped apartments again, reports the New York Times, buying a third-floor eleven-room flat in architect J.E.R. Carpenter’s 960 Park Avenue for $11 […]
Meet the Ghosts of 740 Park
The apartment with the best back story at 740 Park has changed hands, according to the real estate mavens at The Real Deal. Developer Will Zeckendorf, who bought it in 2011 for $27 million, has now sold it to LBO kingpin Peter May and his wife Leni for $29.5 million, hopefully breaking even. The flat […]
House of Outrageous Fortune a “scathing tell-all”
In reporting the news that Fifteen Central Park West, opened in 2008, remains the city’s most expensive residential building nine years later, arriviste claims for Billionaire’s Row on Fifty-seventh Street notwithstanding, the real estate blog 6sqft also name-checks the “scathing tell-all” House of Outrageous Fortune. That’s my 2014 New York Times bestseller about the building, […]
Towers of Power in the news last week
Last week, 740 Park was back in the news in The Real Deal, which wrote of a price cut on a long-listed duplex, and in the Wall Street Journal, after the sale by hedgie David Ganek of the apartment where Jackie Kennedy grew up, and 15 Central Park West was spotlit in a story on […]