Scott Rudin Lists Graydon Carter’s Former Manhattan Townhouse

Not quite four years ago, prolific and powerful film, television and theater producer Scott Rudin — a rare EGOT who stepped back from most of his producing projects after numerous ex-staffers made allegations of workplace bullying in 2021 — made a $17.425 million off-market-if-not-exactly-under-the-radar purchase of a historic townhouse on a particularly pretty tree-lined block in the heart of New York’s West Village. The seller of the handsomely unassuming red-brick home was dashing former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, who netted a small fortune on the sale; he bought the place in 2005 for just over $3 million.

Rudin and his former theater publicist husband John Barlow soon engaged the services of architect G.P. Schafer to restore and update the nearly 200-year-old home. Now back on the market at $26 million, there are four bedrooms and four bathrooms, plus a couple of powder rooms, divvied up among the townhouse’s 3,850 square feet. Standing four floors atop a finished basement, the 19-foot-wide red-brick residence has a 42-foot south-facing garden. Deborah Grubman of Corcoran holds the listing.

With 11-foot ceilings and restored window shutters, the parlor level great room stretches to 38 feet with two antique fireplaces and built-in bookcases. Beyond the great room, a more intimate library has a Juliet balcony that looks over the garden below. The garden level, with its own under-the-stoop family entrance, consists of a den convertible to a bedroom, a formal dining room, and a gleaming marble kitchen that spills out to the garden. Bamboo adds fluttery privacy to the faux-grassed oasis.

Two guest and family bedrooms on the third floor each have a private bathroom, while one of them opens through a trio of French doors to a private terrace. The top floor is devoted to the primary suite. The bathroom is en suite but, somewhat less than ideally, the public stair landing must be cross to get from the bedroom to the spacious dressing room.

Many original architectural elements were carefully preserved, including the original staircase, but for those unable or unwilling to climb up and down stairs day in and day out, an elevator serves the upper four floors. Stairs are the only way down to the basement, where there’s a laundry room, a half-bath, and an exercise room lined with storage cabinets.

Rudin, who has long maintained a historic Dutch Colonial getaway in the Hamptons he also had restored and updated by G.P. Schafer, previously lived uptown, in a two-unit combination at the fabled San Remo apartment house on Central Park West; the spacious spread was sold over the summer of 2021, in an off-market deal for $13.3 million, to Sparknotes founder and publisher Dan Weiss and literary agent Amy Berkower.