The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has closed on his purchase of a mansion-size apartment overlooking Central Park, paying $35.2 million, which was well above the asking price.
Mr. Murdoch, the founder and executive chairman of the News Corporation, which owns Fox News, bought the full-floor co-op at 150 Central Park South, a.k.a. the Hampshire House, from the estate of Julian H. Robertson Jr., a hedge fund pioneer and philanthropist who died last year. The apartment had been listed for $30 million.
The sale seemed to represent a fresh start for Mr. Murdoch following last year’s divorce from the model Jerry Hall. He went into contract on the home in mid-February just before announcing plans to marry Ann Lesley Smith, a former dental hygienist and San Francisco police chaplain. Although he called off the engagement only days after it was disclosed, he decided to proceed with the purchase, adding to an already sizable real estate portfolio.
His latest transaction was among the top closings in New York City in May. The priciest was the $41 million sale of the art dealer David Mugrabi’s fully renovated townhouse at 12 East 82nd Street. The buyer was anonymous.
On the Upper West Side, the Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko, who parted ways with the Metropolitan Opera last year, found a buyer for her apartment.
And there were several notable sales downtown. In TriBeCa, Bradley Peltz, a onetime professional hockey player and a brother of the actor Nicola Peltz, bought a duplex, while Kevin D. Ness, a biotech entrepreneur, and his wife, Stephanie J. Ness, sold their duplex. Cary Tamarkin, a developer and architect, sold his Greenwich Village co-op loft.
Mr. Murdoch’s new home on Central Park South, acquired for $35.2 million, is roughly 6,500 square feet and has seven bedrooms, one of which had been converted to a gym, five full bathrooms and two powder rooms.
The generously proportioned primary bedroom suite, which opens to the gym, features a sitting area, fireplace, giant dressing room and a spalike bathroom with a separate soaking tub.
The apartment also has a paneled media room off a spacious eat-in kitchen that is equipped with two of everything (appliance-wise), along with a butler’s pantry and separate laundry room nearby. Off the kitchen is a large formal dining room. But the real showstopper is the great room — great, as in 38-by-20 feet, according to the listing. The great room has an ornate fireplace, soaring 18-foot ceilings and three arched doorways, each standing 15 feet high, that provide a dramatic opening to a terrace with equally dramatic park views.
The apartment’s previous resident, Mr. Robertson, who died at the age of 90, founded the Tiger Capital Management hedge fund and was credited with helping create the modern hedge fund industry. He was also among the country’s top philanthropists, supporting various causes, from medical research to the environment.
Mr. Robertson had lived in the Central Park South co-op, near Seventh Avenue, for the last three decades in addition to owning or maintaining several other homes, including a 10-acre estate in Locust Valley, N.Y.
Another prominent former resident of the apartment was Alice Tully, an opera singer and patron of the arts for whom a concert hall at Lincoln Center is named.
The East 82nd Street townhouse, sold by Mr. Mugrabi, a prominent art dealer, for $41 million, is a 19th-century, neo-Federal building ensconced on a leafy block between Fifth and Madison Avenues in the Metropolitan Museum Historic District. It had been on the market since late 2021 for as much as $52 million, according to StreetEasy, and more recently reduced to $45 million.
Once vacant and near derelict, the red brick and white marble structure was transformed inside into a contemporary showcase after Mr. Mugrabi purchased it in 2013 for $15 million and undertook a massive gut renovation. The home at one time became the center of a contentious divorce between Mr. Mugrabi, who owns an extensive Warhol collection, and his now ex-wife Libbie Mugrabi.
The house encompasses around 12,000 square feet over seven floors and has four main bedrooms, seven full bathrooms and three powder rooms. Plus, there are separate staff quarters on the finished lower level. (And, yes, there is an elevator, in addition to a Corian spiral staircase.)
The primary suite takes up the entire third floor and includes a terrace, one of six in the building, an extra-large (as in 140 square feet) dressing room and closets — lots and lots of them. The floor plan shows at least 15. On the fifth floor is a guest suite equipped with a kitchenette, study and sitting room.
In addition to a rear garden off the breakfast room, the house has a rooftop terrace with views of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering, monthly property taxes are around $14,200.)
The new owner used the limited liability company 12 E 82.
Unlikely to be performing in New York City anytime soon, Ms. Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, sold her apartment at 10 West End Avenue. The sale price was $6 million.
The Met had canceled her contract after she refused to denounce President Vladimir V. Putin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (An arbitrator recently ordered the Met to pay the Russian singer more than $200,000 for the performances it canceled.)
The apartment consists of two adjacent units that Ms. Netrebko had bought in 2009 and 2013 for a total of nearly $4.9 million and later combined.
The meticulously renovated home, in the Lincoln Square neighborhood between West 59th and 60th Streets, has 3,383 square feet of interior space, with four bedrooms, five full bathrooms and two half-baths. And it contains not one, but two, great rooms, each with an open kitchen and a balcony that provides stunning cityscape and Hudson River views. In between the great rooms is a formal dining space, perfect for entertaining.
The buyer made the purchase through the Hughes 2000 Trust.
Mr. Peltz paid nearly $8.7 million for his brand-new penthouse at 100 Franklin Street and Avenue of the Americas.
The apartment, which extends 3,670 square feet over two floors, was first listed for almost $10 million in late 2020. There are three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. And probably the best part: It comes with a 1,507-square-foot private roof terrace, providing charming views of the neighborhood and plenty of room for a few summer soirees.
Mr. Peltz, who is the son of the billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz, had played briefly for the Ottawa Senators organization. He currently runs a software company that provides automated health care scheduling.
Several blocks away, at 161 Hudson Street, between Laight and Hubert Streets, the Nesses sold their penthouse duplex for $15.6 million, pretty much breaking even on the transaction. They had bought the apartment through a trust less than two years ago for $15.5 million.
The 5,800-square-foot duplex, fully renovated with high-end finishes, also has plenty of outdoor space. It has a rooftop deck, landscaped and irrigated, as well as a 20-by-27-foot wraparound terrace reachable through the skylighted living room, media room and home office.
The unit has five bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms, along with a kitchen and kitchenette, and a laundry/utility room with two sets of washers and dryers. There’s an abundance of closet space, too, especially in the primary bedroom suite, which has two very large walk-in closets. But just in case more spare space is needed, the apartment also comes with a 365-square-foot storage room in the building’s basement.
Mr. Ness has been at the helm of biotechnology companies like Inscripta and 10x Genomics. He and his wife are currently based in Colorado.
The buyers were the legal scholars Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz and Michelle E. Boardman.
Mr. Tamarkin got $4.7 million for his apartment at 54 East 11th Street, between University Place and Broadway in the Village, below his $5.5 million asking price.
The loft — around 2,100 square feet, with 12-foot ceilings — has three bedrooms and two full bathrooms, along with a laundry room and office nook.
Mr. Tamarkin, an architect and developer whose projects include 140 Perry Street and 495 West Street, had gut-renovated the unit (no surprise here), replacing the old kitchen and bathrooms and adding hardwood floors and custom built-in millwork throughout the space.
The buyers were Walter D. Wick, an owner of car dealerships, and Lisa Hedley Wick, a wellness coach.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
