Comedian and actress Joan Rivers has placed her duplex condominium unit on Manhattan's Upper East Side on the market for $25,000,000.
As we continue finally writing up some items that have appeared elsewhere but not here yet, we wanted to take a moment to comment on Rivers' condo, which the New York Times' Josh Barbanel first wrote about back on May 31.
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Located atop a limestone mansion at 1 E. 62nd Street (off Fifth Avenue, in the Upper East Side's Lenox Hill sub-neighborhood) that was designed by architect Horace Trumbauer and built in 1903 for John R. Drexel (a grandson of the founder of Philadelphia banking house Drexel & Co.) and his socialite wife Alice Troth Drexel (1865-1947), Rivers' three-bedroom condo includes what once had been a double-height ballroom. Rivers, 76, has renovated the unit, the Times noted, hiring artisans to strip away layers of paint and grime from elaborate paneling, recreate gilded molding and paint "the ballroom ceiling pale blue with white clouds."
Other features in the 11-room unit include four and a half baths, reception rooms, a two-story gallery, a light-flooded living room with original architectural detail, 23-foot-high ceilings, original boiserie (that's ornate and intricately wood-carved paneling to those who have never taken French!), parquet-de-Versailles flooring, and original marble fireplace surrounds, according to listing information. The condo also has a formal dining room with 18th-century panels and an ornately paneled, corner library, both of which overlook a south-facing terrace with city and park views, the paper reported. The master suite looks out over a second terrace with Central Park views. We should note that there's some disagreement over the size of Rivers' unit; listing information says it's 5,190 square feet large, but New York public records say that it only measures 4,009 square feet.
Rivers owns the 42-foot-wide condo under her legal name, Joan Rosenberg. She purchased it in 1988 for an undisclosed price from what appears to have been a developer.
Check out an online listing sheet for the mansion -- complete with photos.
Where is Rivers off to? The listing agent for the condo told the Times that she intends to spend more of her time on the West Coast with her daughter and grandson. That of course raises the question of whether Rivers also will part with her spread in New Milford, Connecticut, which she has owned since 2000. So far, the house is not on the market -- yet. We'll keep you posted. Stay tuned.