Though he has long maintained his home base in an affluent Chicago suburb, once upon a time Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan owned a suburban house-sized loft in New York’s Soho neighborhood. When he sold it to the current owners in 2005, for $3.81 million, the smooth-pated songwriter, musician, professional wrestling promotor, and “conspiracy crank,” nearly tripled the $1.426 million he paid in 1998.
Designed by architect Jarvis Morgan Slade, the handsome red-brick structure was built in 1883 and converted to loft-style residential condos in the late 1990s by architect (and longtime Soho resident) Lawrence B. Bogdanow. When Corgan purchased the third-floor condo, the building was freshly updated and the unit was a relatively raw shell that had recently been updated for modern life with new plumbing, electrical, and heating and cooling systems.
Whatever improvements Corgan made, the apartment was additionally updated and expensively transformed by the current sellers into a chic urban residence with three bedrooms and three and a half baths in almost 4,500 square feet. The condo is back on the market and available via Daniela Sassoun and Mark Mistovich of Sotheby’s International Realty / East Side Manhattan Brokerage with a price tag of just under $10.9 million. Taxes and common charges total about $6,200 per month.
In mint condition and certainly fit for a modern-day alt-rock star, the loft offers three exposures, with six windows over charmingly cobblestoned and boutique lined Wooster Street, along with half a dozen operational French doors that open to Juliet balconies over a courtyard. Beyond the keypad elevator entry, with coat closet and powder room, there’s 1,300-square-foot great room with 12.5-foot ceilings, a trio of original columns supporting a massive wooden ceiling beam, a minimalist gas fireplace, and bespoke steel and glass room dividers.
There’s also a gourmet kitchen with a spacious butler’s pantry/laundry room, a dedicated office space with built-in desks, and a library/media room. Each of the two guest bedrooms has a private bath, as does the primary bedroom, which also includes a walk-in closet almost as big as a quintessentially bijou studio apartment in the West Village.
Some years after he sold up in lower Manhattan, Corgan picked up a secluded home in a quiet canyon above Beverly Hills where back in 2012, he got into legal brouhaha with his next-door neighbors, Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart, about a eucalyptus tree on his property that fell down on their house. He sold the L.A. house in 2017, for just $50,000 more than he paid in 2009, and since 2003, when he bought it for $6.8 million, he’s resided primarily in a 9,600-square-foot lakefront mansion in the Highland Park suburb north of Chicago. In 2013, about the time he hooked up with his partner Chloe Mendel, he expanded his real estate footprint with the $1.25 million purchase of a smaller house next door.
The Smashing Pumpkins broke up in 2000 but reformed in 2006, with Corgan being the only original member. The first installment of the band’s twelfth studio album, “Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts,” was released late last year. The second installment is scheduled for the end of this month, with the third set to be released in April.
