Being the progeny of the superrich not infrequently comes with some pretty posh perks. Just ask fortunately born Tamara Winn and her husband Randy, who are fixing to list their Manhattan apartment with an asking price of $40 million.
About a thirteen years ago, Mrs. Winn, the elder daughter of junk bond billionaire Ira Rennert, and Mr. Winn, a fairly low profile financier, paid the estate of Mosler Safe heiress Janet Coleman $32 million — in cash — for a large co-operative apartment at 740 Park Avenue, a building so steeped in lore and so chock-a-block with influential and enormously wealthy residents that best-selling author Michael Gross wrote a page-turner of a book about it.
So the story goes, the funds for the suburban mansion-sized apartment came from Mrs. Winn’s deep-pocketed father who, right about the same time, for his younger daughter, Yonina Davidson, paid fashion designer Vera Wang $33.6 million for an equally impressive apartment in another prestigious Park Avenue building. (Incidentally, Wang now lives at 740 Park Avenue, in a massive duplex previously owned for three decades by her exceedingly well to do late parents and transformed into a “Modernist Masterpiece” recently fawned over in Vogue.)
The 19-story Art Deco edifice at 740 Park Avenue, which looms over the northwest corner of East 71st Street and a particularly posh stretch of Park Avenue, was designed by acclaimed architect Rosario Candela and built by the grandfather of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who famously lived there as a child. Completed just after the 1929 stock market crash, the apartment house nonetheless became (and remains) a limestone-clad bastion for immensely rich folk.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. occupied one of the building’s plummiest units, a high-floor duplex now owned by Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, while Jackie O’s childhood home last changed hands in 2017 when hedge fund fat cat David Ganek sold it for $25.25 million — far less than its pie-in-the-sky original asking price of $44 million — to Jacob Safra, scion to one of the richest banking families on the planet. In 2012 distressed securities investor Howard Marks paid a blistering $52.5 million for a ocean liner-sized 30-room duplex, and about two years later hedge fund titan Israel “Izzy” Englander got into an intense bidding war and paid a heart-stopping $71.278 million for a titanic duplex directly below a humongous unit he already owned.
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Image Credit: Joe Strini for Property Shark Available through Stacey Kanbar at Compass, the Winn duplex carries common charges of nearly $17,000 per month, according to digital marketing materials, and the buyers will not only need to pay the full purchase price in cash — no mortgages allowed at 740 Park Avenue, thank you very much — but also a 3% flip tax that, at its current $40 million ask, tallies up to $1.2 million. Done over for the Winns by Ferguson & Shamamian Architects, the east-facing duplex rambles over about 7,400 square feet with five en suite bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms.
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Image Credit: via City Realty An elevator landing swaddled in lustrous wood paneling leads to an entrance gallery where the Winns display a few signficant pieces of their museum-quality collection of name-brand contemporary art. Light reflects off the oatmeal-colored polished stone floor and a soignée floating curved staircase is lined with a wrought iron railing emblazoned with curlicued shapes that rather aptly resemble dollar signs.
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Image Credit: via City Realty At more than 32 feet long and almost 25 feet wide, the ballroom-sized living room showcases an austere antique fireplace at one end and four huge windows that overlook Park Avenue.
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Image Credit: via City Realty Thin, gleaming strips of silver-y metal enhance the family room/library’s paneled walls, while the baronial dining room is more daringly lacquered in cherry red.
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Image Credit: via City Realty Decked out with every culinary accouterment an amateur cook or private chef might ever want or need, the colossal eat-in kitchen reflects a modern minded take on a 1950s diner with stainless steel tile backsplashes, three designer versions of a classic lunch-counter stool with red leather seats and funky-chic cheetah-print carpeting on the back staircase.
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Image Credit: via City Realty All by itself larger than many Manhattan studio apartments, the second-floor landing at the top of the main staircase divides the sprawling primary suite from an also sprawling children’s wing.
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Image Credit: via City Realty Three en-suite guest or family bedrooms spoke off around a common sitting room with more cheetah-print carpeting and tons of custom storage cabinets.
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Image Credit: via City Realty The primary suite is a private and restrained sanctuary with a fireplace in the bedroom, a separate sitting room, four walk-in closets, a pint-sized office space and two bathrooms worthy of a five-star hotel.
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Image Credit: via City Realty Though not officially on the market, already posted digital marketing materials describe the Winn duplex as a “rarely available” offering even though there are at least three other units at 740 Park Avenue that are currently for sale, and with much lower prices: An opulent if outdated lower floor duplex, the longtime home of late financier Charles Dyson and his late wife June Dyson, popped up for sale last month at $19.5 million; former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s decidedly traditional duplex — in the same line and the same size as the Winns’ pad but a handful of floors higher — is now listed at a comparatively bargain basement price of $25.75 million after it was first listed almost 3.5 years ago at $32.5 million; and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain’s smaller but no less deluxe duplex penthouse, with four terraces but just one proper bedroom, plus two staff rooms and a study convertible to a bedroom, is now priced at $32.5 million after it was initially put up for sale nearly three years ago at $39.5 million.