SELLER: Alec Baldwin
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $1,250,000
SIZE: 2 bedroom, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Property gossip column staple Alec Baldwin sold a modest if not exactly cheap ground-floor apartment in the distinguished Eldorado building on New York City’s Upper West Side for $1.25 million. The buyer, first revealed by the eagle-eyed property gossips at 6sqft.com, is political economist and private equity fund founder David E. Spiro.
It’s not clear when the busy-as-a-beaver Oscar-nominated film and television actor, who, depending on one’s political point of view, gets rave or scathing reviews for his ruthless characterization of President Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” purchased the ground floor apartment or how much he paid. Presumably the acquisition came sometime after 1991 when he spent an also unknown sum for a significantly larger unit on the 22nd floor of the Eldorado that, after he first and unsuccessfully had up for sale in 2009 at $7.5 million, he set out for sale in 2011 at $9.5 million and quickly sold for its full asking price. The smaller, ground floor unit does not appear to have been listed on the open market so the most recent asking price isn’t public but when Mister Baldwin first put the larger apartment on the open market back in 2009 at $7.5 million it was also offered in conjunction with the smaller unit at a combined price of $8.9 million, giving the smaller apartment a de facto price tag of $1.4 million at that time.
Archived digital marketing materials from 2009 show the ground floor unit encompassed an unusually roomy, dining room-sized foyer, a 27-foot-long living room, one large bedroom with private bathroom and a smaller bedroom and bathroom just off the eat-in kitchen.
Previous high-profile residents of the twin-towered Eldorado include Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Fox, Moby and U2 bassist Adam Clayton. Action flick stalwart Bruce Willis briefly owned a 3,150-square-foot unit on a lower floor that he bought in March 2013 for $8.85 million and sold after an extensive renovation almost exactly two years later for $12.75 million. Less than a year later, the buyer, a Goldman Sachs honcho, caught a raging case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the apartment back up for sale at $12.9 million and, after 1.5 long, unfruitful years on the market, would like to unload the three-bedroom and 3.5 bathroom spread badly enough the current asking price is $10.75 million, a punishing $2 million less than was paid. But, we digress. Current residents of the celebrated, Emery Roth-designed Art Deco-style building include broadcast journalist and talk show host Meredith Viera and blockbuster filmmaker Ron Howard whose full floor spread in the building’s north tower is now for sale at $11.5 million after first coming available on the open market in late March for $12.5 million.
The paparazzi-abhoring and occasionally volatile veteran actor and his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, were repeatedly spotted peeping expensive apartments over the fall of 2016 but as far as this property gossip knows remain residents of a swanky Greenwich Village apartment house where they own two contiguous units, a generously terraced, 4,137-square-foot duplex penthouse with three bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms they bought in the fall of 2011 for $11,709,875 million and a significantly smaller, 840-square-foot one-bedroom unit picked up in June 2012 for $1,210,950. The couple, parents to three young children, previously owned a third unit in the building, a one-bedroom and one-bathroom on the 8th floor that they acquired in 2013 for $2.25 million and sold at a loss in 2015 for $2.1 million.
photo: Christopher Bride for Property Shark; floor plan: via Street Easy
