Having traded up to a larger, more luxuriously appointed and far more expensive spread in New York City’s picturesque and exuberantly pricey West Village, “Orange Is the New Black” actor Jason Biggs and comedic writer/actress and social media personality Jenny Mollen sold their former loft at the so-called Medium Lipstick building in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood for $2.66 million. The recorded sale price may be quite a bit below the original $2.99 million asking price the fourth-floor unit was saddled with when it first popped up for sale in early 2017 but it is none-the-less a smidgen over the final $2.65 million asking price and a bit more than $100,000 above the $2.55 million the creatively comedic couple coughed up for the co-operative loft in October 2013.
Professionally designed for the Biggs-Mollens by L.A.-based designer Cliff Fong, who has also worked over multi-million dollar homes for Hollywood luminaries like chat show queen Ellen DeGeneres and powerhouse television creator/writer/producer Ryan Murphy, the approximately 2,200-square-foot apartment has an enormous, open plan living space that’s more than forty-feet long at its widest point, two proper bedrooms and two bathrooms plus a windowless den convertible to a third bedroom and a home office nook flooded with light from a huge, single-pane picture window. A center work island with poured concrete countertop divides the living and dining area from the compact, smartly arranged kitchen with premium-quality designer stainless steel appliances and classic white subway tile backsplashes. Both bedrooms have carefully cleaned and restored, quintessentially loft-like exposed brick walls and the sunny, south-facing master suite, plenty large enough to accommodate an ample sitting or dressing area, includes a walk-in closet and a generously windowed bathroom with marble-topped double-sink vanity and glass-enclosed steam shower lined with marble tiles.
Other creature comforts and features of note include three-quarter inch thick Cocoa Bean toned hardwood floorboards, sound-proofed windows that keep the apartment pin-drop quiet; a couple of handfuls of exposed wood support columns that are original to the building; a laundry closet in the over-sized guest bathroom and, in the living room, a chunky, reclaimed brick raised hearth fireplace.
Residents of the Medium Lipstick building, an eight-story and 16-unit boutique building that dates to the 1860s that fronts the loud, heavily trafficked West Side Highway and was once used a spice warehouse, pay hefty monthly fees — in the case of the former Biggs-Mollen loft they’re $3,737 per month — and are provided with a keyless electronic security entry system along with access to a 1,000-square-foot landscaped roof deck with views that sweep across the Hudson River and include the New Jersey Skyline, the Statue of Liberty and Governor’s Island.
Biggs, who rose to fame and fortune in the crass, toilet-humored “American Pie” film franchise and is set to appear in the soon-to-be-released Michael Caine and Katie Holmes starring satire “Dear Dictator,” and Mollen, who wrote the wittily comedic memoir “I Like Your Just the Way I Am,” which she and Biggs subsequently turned into a digital sitcom of the same name on which they co-starred, decamped Tribeca for the West Village where in June 2017 they coughed up $6.975 million for an almost 3,000-square-foot condo with four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in a swanky, newly-converted building. The couple previously owned a secluded 2.5-acre estate with a hacienda-style residence and guesthouse in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills that they acquired in late 2013 for $3.9 million and sold less than two years later for $4.5 million.
listing photos and floor plan: Douglas Elliman Real Estate
