Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times 810 Fifth Avenue A full-floor apartment at the exclusive 810 Fifth Avenue co-op that the billionaire Charles R. Bronfman bought for $21 million in 2010 sold for $19 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.
The unit, No. 6, which became a white-glove real estate orphan after the 2011 divorce of Mr. Bronfman and his third wife, Bonnie Roche Bronfman, was composed of 13 rooms that were reduced to nine to create a magisterial south-facing master suite. It has some 40 feet of Central Park frontage and a monthly maintenance fee of $8,902.
The 1926 Renaissance-style limestone building at the corner of 62nd Street was designed by J.E.R. Carpenter to house a select few like Nelson Rockefeller, who owned a triplex penthouse there. In an ode to privacy, it has just 12 apartments on 13 floors, and its board nixes potential buyers who are unprepared to pay cash for the privilege of moving in. At 810 Fifth Avenue, it is perfectly acceptable to be in finance, but not to finance.
Mr. Bronfman, the retired co-chairman of the Seagram Company, had been trying to sell the three-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath apartment ever since he and Mrs. Bronfman opted for an especially amicable divorce and marked the occasion by throwing a formal bash for a few hundred of their closest friends. Mr. Bronfman told The New York Times that the apartment was very much a casualty of the split: “We decided not to renovate until we decided to stay together,†he said. Obviously, they never got around to personalizing the décor. The initial $25 million asking price was gradually reduced to $19.9 million.
Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s International Realty represented Mr. Bronfman. David E. Goel, the managing general partner of Matrix Capital Management, a hedge fund, was the buyer; Joseph A. Tuana of Tuana Associates negotiated on his behalf.
The runner-up, at $11,847,838.75, was a combination of two sponsor units at 135 East 79th Street, near Lexington Avenue. The buyer, Gerald A. Erickson Jr., a scion of the Holiday Companies, a chain of convenience stores founded by his family in 1928, acquired the so-called Maisonette West, a 4,300-square-foot six-bedroom duplex at the base of the limestone-and-brick condominium, and added No. 2B, the only studio on the offering plan. Carrying costs are $11,168. The Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group handled the deal for the sponsor, the Brodsky Organization; Inez Wade of Stribling & Associates brought the buyer.
Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.
