SELLER: Alan Cumming
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $2,200,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 1 bathroom
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Scottish-born showbiz hypenate and art world iconoclast Alan Cumming hoisted his full-floor flat in an intimate, seven-unit pre-war co-operative building in New York City’s long ago gritty now almost entirely gentrified East Village neighborhood at $2.2 million. Property records show “The Good Wife” star bought the apartment in July 2005 for $1.695 million and current listing details show the updated apartment, described to this property gossip by Douglas Elliman listing broker Noble Black as a “super charming, character-filled space,” has four bedrooms and, less than optimally, just one compact but beneficiently windowed bathroom along with refinished wide plank wood floors, elegant ceiling moldings and window trimmings, and loads of custom built-ins for storage and knick-knack display.
A small but proper foyer blessed with two coat closets opens to a sitting room with floor-to-ceiling shelving and abundant additional storage space. Windows overlook a verdant courtyard garden overlook and the room is lit by an amusing chandelier fashioned from dozens of martini glasses. (Just in case any of y’all might want a martini glass chandelier of your own, there’s one available on 1stdibs for $9,800.) The adjoining dining room, plenty roomy enough to accommodate a cozy lounge area, has a fireplace fronted by an antique carved wood mantelpiece and two windows that provide leafy, south facing views of always lively Thompkins Square Park. The windowed kitchen, open to the dining room over a center island with integrated snack bar, features fairly ordinary white raised panel cabinetry, easy-maintenance stainless steel counter tops, and medium-grade stainless steel appliances. An 30-plus-foot-long corridor stretches north from the foyer and links the pubic rooms to the bedroom wing that incorporates three itty-bitty bedrooms — one outfitted as an office with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and another with a cushioned built-in window seat and over-scaled paisley patterned wallpaper — along with a master bedroom with three wood-trimmed windows that allow for ample light and cross-ventilation.
Cumming who in 2014 and 2015 reprised his 1998 Tony winning Broadway role and over the last six years has received two Golden Globe nominations and three Emmy nominations for his role on “The Good Wife,” previously owned a 2,254-square-foot condo in the heart of the Chelsea gallery district as well as a 600-square-foot studio-style apartment in the Gramercy Park ‘hood that was sold in the fall of 2014 for $762,500. And this property gossip assumes Mister Cumming and his accomplished, San Francisco born artist/illustrator husband Grant Shaffer will soon move if they haven’t already to a red brick Italianate townhouse, also in the East Village, that they picked up in late 2013 for $4.65 million and subsequently extensively renovated.
Listing photos: Douglas Elliman
