Beauty Mogul Cassandra Grey Lists Pretty Tribeca Penthouse for $12 Million

Beauty mogul Cassandra Grey barely had time to hang art on the walls of her recently purchased lower Manhattan penthouse before flipping it back on the market this week at a nicely profitable price.

Tax records show Grey, newly engaged to live-in girlfriend Samantha Ronson, founder of e-tail beauty brand Violet Grey, and widow of late Hollywood producer Brad Grey, scooped up the extremely attractive condo in Tribeca just last August, for $10.85 million. Now, less than eight months later, she’s looking to bid it adieu for $12 million. Carl Gambino at Compass has the listing.

The building was originally the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company, one of the oldest life insurance companies in America. In the neo-Italian Renaissance style and completed in the late 1890, the handsomely embellished structure’s design history is interesting and somewhat complicated. In a sense, the building was constructed “backwards.” The eastern section, designed by Stephen D. Hatch, was originally intended to harmonize with the old New York Life building, built between 1868-70 and then located at the western end of the block. When Hatch suddenly died, the commission was turned over to McKim, Mead & White. The old building was demolished and the new block-long edifice erected in its place. It’s long been known and loved for its clock and clocktower, a rarity in New York.

The building was purchased by developers in 2013 and converted to condos; sales began in 2018. There are 152 residences in the building, with four of the units, including this one, offering private elevator access. Grey’s penthouse spans slightly more than 2,900 square feet with three bedrooms and 3.5 baths. The duplex features an additional 975 square feet of outdoor space spread over four separate terraces.

Showcasing ten-foot ceilings, over-scaled chevron-pattern floor boards and a gas fireplace, the great room opens to a 50-foot-long terrace. High, perforated walls around the terrace allow plenty of light to pour through living room’s floor-t0-ceiling wall of glass but also create enviable privacy from surrounding buildings. Along the rear of the lower floor, two en-suite bedrooms and the kitchen all spill out to a second 50-foot-long terrace. The lower level is completed by a spacious laundry room and a powder room with a sculptural Nero Marquina marble sink.

Take the stairs (or the private elevator) up to the penthouse-level primary suite, where there are floor-to-ceiling windows, a gas fireplace, two walk-in closets, and two private terraces, one outside the bedroom and the other off the marble-sheathed en suite.

In addition to multiple attended lobbies and private valet parking, residents have access to more than 20,000 square feet of amenities geared toward entertaining, relaxation and revitalization.

Possibly, somewhere, McKim, Mead, and White are impressed with the contemporary yet timeless feeling within what has become one of Tribeca’s most iconic buildings.

Several months before she bought the Tribeca penthouse, Grey shed another fashionably appointed home, but on the west coast. Set on a lush plateau high in L.A.’s Hollywood Hills, the 1958 Richard Neutra-designed main house and its complementary detached guesthouse (by architect Steven Ehrlich) went for $7.5 million to Miami-based Jason Rubell and Michelle Simkins-Rubell, both scions to prominent American families.