Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times A co-op at 907 Fifth Avenue owned by Huguette M. Clark.The most livable of the antiquated and somewhat ghostly trio of apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue once owned, but rarely occupied, by the reclusive copper heiress Huguette M. Clark sold for $22.5 million, the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records. Mrs. Clark died in May at age 104, leaving two wills, a $400 million fortune and no direct heirs.
The co-op has three bedrooms, six and a half baths and three fireplaces, but most important, it offers a full 100 feet of prime frontage on Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The formidable views and inherent grandeur, though , amount to virtually the only aspect of the apartment that does not demand extensive renovation. The place also has a monthly maintenance fee of $14,176.
The buyer, Frederick J. Iseman, the chairman of CI Capital Partners, a private equity firm, paid above the $19 million asking price for No. 8W because he was permitted to annex one room and a part of a hallway at the adjacent No. 8E, the smallest of Mrs. Clark's holdings there and the only apartment that has yet to attract a qualified buyer. That two-bedroom, two-bath unit had been listed at $9 million, but there will be a downward adjustment in price when it is returned to the market in January.
In addition to its nonpareil location in a 1915 Italianate palazzo building designed by J.E.R. Carpenter, the most appealing features of No. 8E include a 47-foot-long gallery, soaring ceilings and a corner living room with park views.
The first of the apartments that sold, her Louis XVI-style penthouse, happened to be the only one of the three in which Mrs. Clark actually lived, in antisocial splendor, attended by servants and a multimillion-dollar collection of dolls: No. 12W was snatched up in July by Boaz Weinstein, a hedge-fund whiz kid, for $25.5 million, $1.5 million above the asking price. Mrs. Clark, of her own volition, spent the final decades of her life in a hospital room and died at Beth Israel Medical Center.
Although the prime minister of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, had made Mrs. Clark's estate what he hoped was a pre-emptive offer of $31.5 million for both eighth-floor co-ops, the notoriously fussy co-op board at 907 Fifth refused to entertain the notion of combining the units.
Mary Rutherfurd and Leslie Coleman of Brown Harris Stevens again represented the estate, and Roberta Golubock of Sotheby's International Realty handled the transaction for Mr. Iseman.
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times 116 East 70th Street.In the same price range, but in far superior condition, a five-bedroom town house at 116 East 70th Street, a tranquil block distinguished by its exquisite architecture and celebrity residents, sold for $22,398,750 to Susan Weber Soros, the former wife of the billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The 1869 town house, its facade dominated by two levels of copper-clad bow windows above fluted columns, was originally listed at $26 million in 2010. When the price was reduced to $22.5 million this year, a smitten Mrs. Soros, the founder of the Bard College Graduate Center for the decorative arts, bought it and blithely listed her splashy corner apartment at the Majestic at 115 Central Park West, No . 19E/F, for $50 million.
What she is parting with, besides her Philippe Starck-designed interiors and furniture, which are included in the deal along with a separate staff unit, are park views from every principal room and a master suite with a terrace that fronts the park.
What she is gaining, besides the potential for amusement in having Woody Allen as a neighbor, is a light-catching five-level home with four outdoor spaces and a glass breakfast solarium leading to a 26-foot-deep garden.
“You can't hit a wrong note on that street,†said Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens, who represented the absentee sellers, identified as Copper House, a limited-liability company based in Wellington, Fla. S. Christopher Halstead of Halstead Property represented Mrs. Soros; he is also the listing agent for her very available 11-room spread at the Majestic.
Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.
