Penthouse sale in Chelsea sets downtown record

The sponsor unit, which encompasses the top three floors of the geometric glass building on West 24th Street and 10th Avenue, closed at $59.06 million, according to property records, which also made it the most expensive transaction in New York City for the month of May.

The previous record for a single residence downtown was another Chelsea penthouse — one at Walker Tower, on West 18th Street — that sold for $50.9 million, in January 2014. (That same year media mogul Rupert Murdoch shelled out a total of $57.9 million for two apartments across four floors at One Madison, the glassy tower at 23 E. 22nd St. in Flatiron.)

The Getty closing wasn’t the only one to surpass the $50 million mark last month. An apartment on the 85th floor of One57, the vitreous skyscraper in midtown, sold for $53.97 million.

Nor was it the only big purchase downtown. A duplex penthouse at 443 Greenwich St. in Tribeca was acquired for $43.79 million.

Elsewhere in the city, there were several other notable May sales. David Geffen, the billionaire record and film executive, sold a Park Avenue co-op; developer Aby Rosen sold his Upper East Side town house; and actor Bruce Willis and his wife, Emma Heming Willis, bought a home on the Upper West Side, after selling a duplex on Central Park West a month earlier.

And in Brooklyn, a town house sale in Brooklyn Heights, at $15.5 million, tied the record for the highest price ever paid for a single residence in the borough. Also, actors Emily Blunt and John Krasinski sold their town house, in Park Slope.

The sprawling Getty penthouse, the first residential closing in the building, was actually a combination of two original units: a duplex on the 10th and 11th floors and a full-floor apartment on the ninth. The units were joined during the building’s construction for a total of roughly 10,000 square feet.

The apartment has six bedrooms and seven baths, two great rooms, and two Gaggenau-outfitted kitchens. The master suite takes up the entire 11th floor. There is also a private rooftop deck and swimming pool.

The 12-story, five-unit Getty condominium was developed by the Victor Group and Michael Shvo, a broker turned developer, on the site of a former Getty gas station. It was designed by architect Peter Marino, who hand-picked different finishes for each apartment. The building will also house a Lehmann Maupin gallery and the Art Hill Foundation, a private museum, on the bottom four floors.

Adam Modlin of the Modlin Group, who is handling sales and marketing of the development with Douglas Elliman Real Estate, said a strict confidentiality agreement prevented him from commenting on the deal, including reports that the buyer was Robert Smith, the billionaire founder of the private equity firm Visa Equity Partners of Austin, Texas. The transaction was done through a limited liability company.

The $53.97-million penthouse at One57, at 157 W. 57th St., in the heart of midtown’s Billionaires’ Row, sold for well below its original $70 million list price of last October. Its most recent asking price was $59 million.

The full-floor apartment has 6,240 square feet of space with three bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths, along with a media room/library and a great room, according to the listing. The enormous master suite features a sitting area with a fireplace, two dressing rooms and two bathrooms.

At 443 Greenwich, the red brick condominium between Desbrosses and Vestry Streets, the sponsor penthouse that sold recently for $43.79 million also sustained a significant price reduction. It had been listed for as much as $58 million. The 8,569-square-foot apartment, on the sixth and seventh floors, contains five bedrooms, six full baths and two half baths, plus a library and an outdoor terrace.

Geffen’s co-op apartment at 785 Fifth Ave., aka the Park V, between 59th and 60th Streets, was sold privately for $24.5 million. The buyer was identified in public records as Eugene Shvidler, a Russian-American oil magnate.

The apartment is around 5,000 square feet, with two bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths, as well as direct Park Avenue views from almost every room, according to StreetEasy. A third bedroom was converted into a professionally designed soundproof screening room.

Several blocks away, at 16 E. 78th St., Rosen’s five-story town house, built around the turn of the last century, sold for $18.38 million, just below its most recent asking price of $19.5 million.

The 6,300-square-foot home, which has an elevator, contains four bedrooms and 6 1/2 baths, according to the listing, along with a full basement with a gym and office space. The master suite takes up the entire fifth floor and features a fireplace, walk-in closets and a private sun deck. There is also an expansive garden terrace on the roof with city and Central Park views.

On the Upper West Side, Willis and his wife traded prewar for new development.

The couple closed on a 3,055-square-foot condominium on the 37th floor of the sculptured glass tower at 1 West End Ave., between 59th and 60th Streets. The price was $7.34 million. In April, they sold for $17.75 million a duplex co-op at 271 Central Park West, at 86th Street.

Their new home is smaller than the previous one: 3,055 square feet, according to the listing, with four bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths. But it has floor-to-ceiling windows that provide striking views of both the city and Hudson River.

In Brooklyn Heights, a town house at 140 Columbia Heights was sold by Timothy Ingrassia, the co-chairman of global mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs, and his wife, Stephanie Ingrassia. The buyers are believed to be Jennifer Connelly, who won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for “A Beautiful Mind,” and Paul Bettany, who stars in “Avengers: Infinity War.” The sale was made through the William and Belinda Sheers Trust, with Carolyn Rossip Malcolm, a business manager for Connelly, acting as trustee.

The $15.5-million purchase price rivals a record sale in 2015 of a nearly 27-foot-wide town house at 177 Pacific St. in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The buyer in that transaction was photographer Jay Maisel.

The Ingrassias had purchased the Brooklyn Heights town house, which has views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline, in 2006 for $10.75 million. The brick building is 25 feet wide and five stories high with 8,000 square feet of interior space. It features three terraces, including one on the roof.

A four-story, 20-foot-wide town house owned by Blunt and Krasinski, both of whom starred in the recent movie that he directed, “A Quiet Place,” sold for $6.56 million. The home is at 586 Fourth St. in the Park Slope Historic District.

The fully restored 1901 French Renaissance Revival, clad in limestone, has seven bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths, according to the listing. Although it has been updated, the house still has many original architectural flourishes, such as crown moldings and millwork, pocket doors, stain- and leaded-glass windows and many built-ins.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Penthouse sale in Chelsea sets downtown record

NEW YORK — A penthouse sale at the Getty, a brand-new boutique condominium hugging the High Line in West Chelsea, has set a record for Manhattan’s downtown.

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