Big Ticket | Towers of Limestone, Sold for $32.5 Million

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times A four-bedroom condo at 15 Central Park West includes several en-suite bathrooms.

The luster and lure of the statuesque limestone towers Robert A. M. Stern designed at 15 Central Park West have not diminished, nor apparently has the supply of well-heeled buyers who do not flinch at the notion of spending $7,000 or more per square foot for the privilege of residing there whenever they drop into town. A four-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath condominium with multiple Central Park vistas has sold for $32.5 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records. The original listing price last June was $36 million.

At 4,584 suare feet, the apartment, No. 7D, is among the largest of the nonpenthouse units at 15 Central Park West, where the stunning penthouse formerly owned by Sanford I. Weill, the ex-head of Citigroup, famously sold last year for $88 million to absentee Russian owners. (Like most billionaires, they are partial to assembling a global residential footprint, as are the buyers of No. 7D, who will apparently use the residence as one in a string of impressive pieds-à-terre.)

Access to the apartment, which has monthly carrying charges of $9,271, is by a grand gallery that opens, through French doors, onto a 32-by-20-foot corner living room with park views. The adjacent library, with its built-in accouterments of French aspen, also overlooks the park. There is a chef’s eat-in kitchen and pantry; the breakfast bar seats six and, according to the listing, the kitc! hen, too, has oblique park views. The master suite, with two baths, picture windows and built-in bookcases, fronts the park; the other three bedrooms all have en-suite marble baths.

Despite settling on a sale price around 9 percent below their target, the sellers, Arthur S. and Evelyne Estey, nearly doubled the investment they made in 2007, when they bought the residence for $16.9 million. Both are veterans of the Lehman Brothers collapse. Mr. Estey has since started his own hedge fund, while his French-born wife, who had a managerial role at Barclays after leaving Lehman, last spring became the chief financial officer of Lycée Français de New York on East 75th Street. (The Lycée is the alma mater of the couple’s children.)

Did they decide to be true to their school and move to the East Side Their broker, Kyle W. Blackmon of Brown Harris Stevens, who lives at 15 Central Park West and was the listing agent for the Weill sale, declined to comment. Mr. Blackmon has sold over $250 million in prperty at the building, $155 million of which came in transactions last year. The sellers used a limited-liability company, Rhyolyte, and the buyer opted for one called 15CPW7D.

Tamir Shemesh, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, represented the buyers. He said they first became enamored of 15 Central Park West after visiting friends who own homes there. “They had been inside many times,” Mr. Shemesh said, “and decided they wanted to be associated with one of the best buildings in New York City.”

The apartment’s gracious size and layout, its plethora of en-suite bathrooms and its proximity to Central Park were also contributing factors. As was the price. “We did some negotiating,” Mr. Shemesh said, “and in the end, both sides were happy with it.” The delighted new owners, he added, are already making cosmetic tweaks and “putting their own imprint” on their acquisition.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.