SELLER: Glenn CloseLOCATION: Central Park West, New York City, NY
PRICE: $11,800,000
SIZE: 2,000 square feet (approx.), 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This morning, after an intense storm that blew our out cable and internet service for most of the day yesterday, we're going to get back in the celebrity real estate saddle and piggy-back on a Jennifer Gould Keil's reveal in today's NY Post's Gimme Shelter column that award winning actress Glenn Close and her third huzbund, bio-tech entrepreneur David Shaw, have listed one of their New York City co-operative apartments with an eye-poppin' asking price of $11,800,000.
Miz Close, as anyone who has ever been to a movie thee-ayter or turned on a tee-vee knows, has an impressive entertainment resume about as long as Your Mama's gin bottle is tall. So rather than spend all day listing her many entertainment projects, suffice to summarize her achievements by simply saying that she's earned 3 Tony awards for hoofing it on Broadway, 5 Academy Award nominations–all of them in the 1980s and one of them, natch, for her chilling role as wild eyed bunny boiler Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, 8 Golden Globe nominations and 2 G-G wins, and 8 Emmy nominations and 3 Emmy wins for her current leading role as ferocious attorney Patty Hewes on the FX channel's program Damages.
As stellar, enviable and lucrative as Miz Close's career on the boob-toob and silver screen may be, it's some of the more personal details of her rather extraordinary life that Your Mama finds most fassinatin: Miz Close's grandpappy Edward–a Greenwich, CT investment banker–was the first of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post's four huzbunds; Her father William was the personal physician and friend of brutal African dictator Mobuto Sésé Seko and later an accomplished reasearcher on the AIDS virus; And, after graduating from the exclusive Choate Rosemary Hall school, Miz Close criss-crossed the country with the conservative, culty and campy Up With People singing group.
True story: Back when we were just knee high to a bar stool at the Moose Lodge, Your Mama's momma had a (bad) habit of opening our home to whatever traveling group of youngsters might have been traveling through town. We had teenage baseball players with ugly acne and bad attitudes, 4-H kids in town for the county fair and, on more than on occasion, our momma hosted a few of those singing and dancing Up With People people who Your Mama remembers as some of the nicest, most polite and glassy eyed folks we have ever met. Wouldn't that be high-sterical if we dug up those old Polaroids and discovered that Miz Close slept on the floor of our living room and ate pancakes in our kitchen?
Anyhoo, property records show that Miz Close scooped up her 19th floor aerie at the super swank thre towered Emory Roth designed Beresford building on Central Park West in May of 2005. Records Your Mama accessed don't reveal a purchase price but it has been previously reported to have been around $6,000,000. The apartment is also widely rumored and reported to have been once owned by Rock Hudson who kept a stool in the pooper for bestie Elizabeth Taylor to stand on so that she could reach the bathroom sink of the 6'5" actor. Listing information shows that the 7 room apartment measures approximately 2,000 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms, 2.5 poopers and 2 dee-voon terraces that not only hang over Cental Park and the Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History but make Your Mama sweat with desire and envy.
Perhaps it's just real estate quibbling–particularly when discussing the rarefied property market of New York City–and even though the kitchen is exquisitely kitted with wood floors, custom Craftsman style cabinetry, a coffered ceiling and a drop-dead and die southern view of Manhattan, Your Mama just isn't sure that for eleven and some million clams we'd want to have to schlepp through the dining room/kitchen combo room and see our ol' grumpy house gurl Svetlana doing dishes or mopping the floor in order to get guests from the front entry to the living room.
Wonky floor plan moment(s) aside, the extraordinary and expansive corner living room has hardwood floors, a fireplace and a quartet of windows through which a stunning, multi-million dollar view encompasses every damn acre of Central Park. A small study just off the living room also has park views and Your Mama imagines that might be the perfect and convenient spot to stash our trusty lap top computer and, uhm, our stash. The decently sized master bedroom, somewhat unfortunately located directly off the dining room/kitchen, has a wall of custom fitted closets plus a windowed dressing room, a five-piece pooper with, thank jeezis, a window, and a small sitting area that opens to the smaller of the apartment's two terraces. Miz Close and her nice gay decorator have simply furnished the bedroom terrace with a pair of weathered teak rocking chairs where she and the Mister can sit quietly in their morning robes, watch the sun rise through the towers that line Fifth Avenue on the other side of Central Park, and contemplate their lucky, lucky, lucky real estate lives.
Behind the dining room/kitchen and just off the entrance foyer, a short hall leads to the second bedroom, a hall bathroom–with a window the children will note–a second study with a wee closet and built-ins and, at the end of the hall near the service entrance, a steep stair leads to a cell-sized staff room with an adjacent laundry room. This upstairs area does make for a nice spot to fold clothes but our gurl Svetlana would shoot a hole in our heads iffin we made her live in a bedroom smaller than our damn closet.
The larger of the two terraces measures 470-ish square feet–larger than most studio apartments in Manhattan–and can be accessed through the kitchen and the study at the back of the apartment. Like the smaller terrace, the larger one has been minimally outfitted with just a smattering of well-weathered teak patio furniture. Let's be honest butter beans, with a view like that, who wants or needs a lot of trees, plants, chaise lounges and other visual distractions? Well, okay, a chaise on which to lie at dusk and watch all the lights of the city flicker on as it gets dark would be heavenly and, probably, worth at least $2,000,000 bucks.
Other notable residents of The Beresford include Jerry Seinfeld who bought violinist Isaac Stern's duplex unit in late 1990s for just $4,350,000, Miramax's Bob Weinstein whose 5 bedroom, 7.5 pooper and two-terraced doo-plex is currently listed for a mind numbing $29,750,000, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit who paid $17,850,000 for actor Tony Randall's 10-room spread back in 2007, Cosmopolitan magazine's ex-editrix Helen Gurley Brown who bought her 4-floor digs in 1976 from Tony, Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winning filmmaker Mike Nichols, tennis titan John McEnroe who owns a tower unit , Oscar nominated director Sidney Lumet, and fur designer Dennis Basso who regularly looks out his maisonette windows to see a small and angry mo b of animal rights protesters who take serious umbrage with his bizness.
In addition to the apartment at The Beresford and a teeny-tiny West Village condo on Charles Street that records show was purchased in July of 2005 for $1,950,000, Miz Close and her huzband Mister Shaw own several other residences along the eastern seaboard. Records show that Miz Close owns a 10+ acre country spread on the unfortunately named Succabone Road in Bedford Hills, NY as well as a 2,074 square foot house in a small gated community adjacent to the former Palm Beach Equestrian Country Club–now called Galipette–in horsey Wellington, FL that she picked up in September of 2004 for $530,000. Property records also reveal that part of Mister Shaw's real estate portfolio includes a 2.5 acre waterfront compound in the Prouts Neck area of Scarborough, ME
photos: Corcoran (interiors); Property Shark (exterior)
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