Actor, comedian, political commentator and former CNBC talk show host Charles Grodin and novelist Elissa Durwood Grodin have their New York City apartment available at $3.2 million. The “Midnight Run” and “Beethoven” star, now in his early 80s and arguably best known from a pop cultural stand point for his “Awkward, Hostile, and Absolutely Hilarious” appearances on late night take shows, acquired the two- and potentially three-bedroom and 2.5-bathroom Hudson River view spread just over a dozen years ago, in May 2006, for $2.7 million, as was first noted by the celebrity property gossip at the New York Post. Marketing materials indicate the tenth-floor co-op, which measures in at somewhere around 1,800-square-feet, carries heavy-duty maintenance fees of $4,299 per month.
The front door opens to an elegantly proportioned 23-foot long entrance gallery and sunny, south-facing living room with a high, beamed ceiling, decorative fireplace with carved marble mantelpiece surmounted by a large flat-screen TV and an oblique view of the Hudson River over Riverside Park. French doors separate the living room from the dining room that, like the living room, features herringbone pattern hardwood floors while the kitchen has up-to-date designer appliances and banker’s green marble countertops on custom-fitted but otherwise quotidian white, raised panel cabinetry.
The master bedroom benefits from its southwestern corner perch with panoramic, cross-river views of the not especially notable skyline of Guttenberg, N.J., and includes a couple of closets plus extensive built-ins, a cushioned window seat and a compact marble bathroom. A secondary bedroom, which also faces west with open views across the river, makes use of a discreet marble hall bathroom while a prison cell-sized potential bedroom, den or home office tucked behind the kitchen contains two closets for storage plus a laundry closet and an en suite half bathroom.
The existing building, a handsome brown brick edifice across the street from Riverside Park and short few blocks walk from the Boat Basin Cafe, was built in the mid 1920s on the site of a five-story residence once occupied by Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff and is where composers George and Ira Gershwin occupied neighboring penthouses in the late 1920s.
The Grodins have long maintained a bucolic spread about 1.5-hours drive outside of Midtown Manhattan, in the historic and affluent community of Wilton, Conn., that comprises three separate parcels that together measure more than seven acres and were purchased in three separate transactions between early 1992 and the middle of 1999 for a total outlay of $1.54 million.
exterior image: Christopher Bride for Property Shark; listing photos and floorplan: Kleier Residential
