SELLER: David and Martha Hamamoto
BUYER: Frank McCourt
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $50,000,000
SIZE: around 5,000 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a very difficult couple of days with the inner workings our our internet service—those people at Time Warner make Your Mama want to hurt somebody with our delicate and pudgy bare hands—and yesterday's slow slog through the Los Angeles residence recently acquired by Faye Resnick and her fiancée, we thought everyone might enjoy some good ol' fashioned New York City floor plan porn in the form of a 5,000 (or so) full floor Fifth Avenue aerie recently purchased for its full $50,000,000 asking price.
The seller is listed in property records and previously reported as David and Martha Hamamoto. (He's a bigwig banker with NorthStar Realty Finance Corporation.) The listed buyer as a fella named Frank McCourt who may or may not be the same Frank McCourt who purchased the L.A. Dodgers in 2004 for $430 million, ran them into bankruptcy, reluctantly sold them earlier this year for $2 billion and recently endured a very bitter, very public and ongoing separation and divorce his long-time wife Jamie.
The master suite, entered via a privacy enhancing vestibule just off the entrance gallery has a large park-view corner bedroom with fireplace, a windowed walk-in closet plus a bedroom-sized dressing room with south facing windows and a large windowed bathroom with double sinks, separate cubby for the crapper and party-sized shower.
A wide corridor shoots east off the entrance gallery and connects to an (almost) 18-foot square family room with three eastern windows and a built in wet bar. Each of the three family bedrooms open off the family room and have private windowed bathrooms.
The purchase included a separate ground floor guest/staff apartment with private exterior entrance on Fifth Avenue, living and dining areas, a compact but fully equipped open-concept kitchen and, finally, two petite bedrooms and two three-quarter bathrooms.
The downright aristocratic, 14-story limestone-clad Italian Renaissance palazzo style apartment house positively drips with a quintessentially New York City sort of moneyed elegance and offers residents full-time doorman services and basement storage cubicles but does not have an on-site garage, sundeck or health club. That lacking in extra amenities, of course, does not keep the monthly common charges low in this top flight building. For example, online documentation shows the monthlies for Mister McCourt's new digs run a gut wrenching $249,648 per year ($20,834 per month).
Some of the other ridiculously wealthy residents of the buildings include octogenarian journalist/talk show co-host Barbara Walters and banker Jay Mantz and wife Jennifer who coughed up $26,474,500 for their high floor spread in early 2008. Mister and Missus Mantz had briefly owned on a full-floor spread on a lower floor that they picked up in May 2008 for $16,840,200 and quickly flipped in January 2008 for $20,000,000 to financier turned powerhouse contemporary art dealer Robert Mnuchin and wife Adriana. Wall Street fat cat turned former New Jersey governor John Corzine's psychotherapist wife Sharon Elghanayan has owned small unit on a lower floor since late 2006 for which she shelled out $7.5 million and the once vilified but back in the saddle banker Jeffrey Verschleiser and wife Amy own a low floor unit that they snagged in March 2005 for $10,000,000.
exterior photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark
listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens (via StreetEasy)