Manhattan Penthouse Linked to the Rothschild Family Priced at $30 million

Atop a Manhattan tower, with wrap-around city and river views, an antiques-filled penthouse connected to the fearsomely powerful Rothschild family banking dynasty is on the market for $30 million. A smaller apartment on a lower floor is included in the price.

In the 1970s, Ariane Dandois set herself up as an antiques dealer in Paris, where she sold Neapolitan chandeliers, Louis XV fauteuils, and (her specialty) exquisite Japanese screens to deep-pocketed bon ton collectors such as Yves Saint Laurent. Her soignée trade (and no doubt her preternatural elegance and remarkable beauty) eventually attracted the romantic attentions of the very rich and very married Baron Elie de Rothschild.

Dandois and Rothschild’s decades-long aventure amoureuse produced one daughter, Ondine de Rothschild. Though there is no dispute over her lineage, Ondine goes unmentioned in most rundowns of the Rothschild family tree, including her father’s 2007 obituary in The New York Times. So the scuttlebutt goes amongst the beau monde: the baron ended his relationship with Dandois not too long after his wife of 56 years, Liliane, died in 2003. The baron died of a fatal heart attack a few years later, in early August 2007, while staying at his hunting lodge in Austria. He was 90.

It was just a few weeks after her father’s death that Ondine, then in her late 20s, closed on the $13.15 million purchase of two apartments on the 30th and 31st floors of the Three Ten, a luxury high-rise in the heart of Midtown. The plan was to share the palatial penthouse with her mother, and according to earlier reports, she spent three years and more than $5 million to combine the two units into a single duplex capable of accommodating the jet-setting socialites. The work was handled by architect Frank Bostelmann, then with the prestigious David Kleinberg Design Associates.

The result is a sprawling, city-view aerie that boasts four ample en-suite bedrooms and a total of four and a half baths in almost 5,400 square feet. There are two principal bedrooms on the upper floor, both with direct access to the same terrace and one with a walk-in safe tucked into a walk-in closet, and two more en-suite bedrooms on the lower floor. The upper floor opens to three huge terraces that together measure about 2,100 square feet. (Some years ago, the mother-daughter duo got into a multimillion-dollar legal dust-up with the building’s condo board when they objected to their plans to add landscaping to their terraces.)

Highlights include an 18th-century parquet flooring, a 750-square-foot living room with a fireplace, an 18-seat dining room, two study/libraries, two sleek galley kitchens (one on each floor), and two laundry rooms. Additional creature comforts include heated floors, automated lighting, an integrated sound system, and, in the informal dining room on the upper floor, a custom doggie door so resident canines can pop out to the terrace and do their business on turf that was replaced monthly.

Included in the offering is an 1,100-square-foot seventh-floor unit that was acquired in 2012 for $1.1 million. Now configured as two independent units with a shared foyer, each has a private bath and kitchen. They were used at times to put up guests and staff as well as to house Rothschild’s daughter and nanny.

Dandois, who lives in Paris, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that prior to the pandemic, she and Rothschild spent about four months a year in New York. However, Rothschild, about whom there are wild conspiracy theories that she’s actually Princess Diana, lives in London, where her daughter is in school, and the family also maintains a retreat in the south of France. So, she told the WSJ, there are “not enough days in the year to keep such a big apartment in New York.”

The penthouse is available through Michele Kleier, Samantha Kleier Forbes, Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, and Emilio Mora at Kleier Residential.