Hedge fund fat cat Larry Creel, a bon vivant partner and portfolio manager at Edgewood Management, who infamously made Business Insider’s list of “Wall Street’s Biggest Party Animals” back in 2011, is selling his and wife Dana Creel’s swanky New York City townhouse for $17 million. That’s almost double the $9 million the couple paid for the place in January 2015. The Creels brought in preeminent French interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot, who also designed their previous apartment, to do up the townhouse in collaboration with Kinlin Rutherfurd Architects. Jill Roosevelt at Brown Harris Stevens has the listing.
When the Creels purchased the townhouse, the Observer commented on the “gaudiness” of the Creels’ former apartment, a three-bedroom spread in the same Fifth Avenue building where Martha Stewart has long maintained a pied-a-terre. They also mentioned the original features of the 1899 limestone townhouse, and commented, “Hopefully some of it will remain intact whenever it’s time to move on to the next one.” Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but not so many of the original features remain intact. The couple and their designers “demolished literally everything except for the façade,” which they couldn’t because it’s landmarked, according to the article on the house in Town & Country, which also referred to the house as a “historical treasure” even though there’s not too much historic about its interiors.
The just over 6,200-square-foot residence has five bedrooms, five fireplaces, and seven full and two half marble baths, all with radiant heat. By the way, even the sidewalk in front of the house is heated so there’s never a need to shovel snow. There are two ground-floor entrances to the home, one a mirrored gallery with terrazzo floors and fluted plaster walls, and the other a less formal affair with a handy mudroom. There’s also a patio on the ground floor.
On the parlor level, the living room has an “antique marble mantel, imported from France,” while the dining room “showcases a wrap-around mural by Parisian designer Florence Girette — recalling the great rooms of 17th-century France.” Low key stuff, as the kids say. Off that is the kitchen, complete with top-of-the-line Lacanche stove and cloud-patterned marble counters that waterfall of the ends of a large island.
The third floor is the location of the two-room master suite, which includes two marble bathrooms and a dressing room with “distressed hammered brass island.” This level also includes the paneled library with cerused oak ceiling, wet bar and adjacent powder room. A remote-controlled “mirrored panel artfully conceals a flat screen TV above a Louis XVI mantle imported from France.” After all, who reads in a library anymore?
Two more ample bedrooms, both with private baths, are joined on the fourth floor by a laundry closet and large terrace. The roof is finished with water and electricity added but needs to be made fabulous by new owners, while the basement level includes a rec room and lounge and a second laundry set up.
People who dislike historical treasures, here’s your new home! Just make sure you have a deep love of brass and marble or deep enough pockets to, as seems to be the way so many exceedingly rich people do, rip it all out and start again.