SELLERS: Keith Richards and Patti Hansen
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $12,230,000
SIZE: (approx.) 2,700 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Keith Richards and Patti Hansen must not have been particularly — ahem — satisfied with the sophisticated lower Manhattan penthouse they picked up two years ago for $10.5 million because, as the celebrity property gossips at Zillow were the first to note, the former top model and the rock ‘n’ roll über-icon put the crisply contemporary duplex aerie back up for sale at $12.23 million. Listing details and other online resources indicate the approximately 2,700-square-foot duplex, a savvy, Joe Serrins-designed combination of three apartments in a prestigious Art Deco co-operative apartment house on lower Fifth Avenue’s “Gold Coast,” offers three and potentially four well-separated bedrooms, four full bathrooms, and a trio of set back terraces.
A catwalk-length entrance hall and gallery lead to a combination living, dining and entertaining space that makes a downright impressive 47-foot stretch from end to end with warm walnut-toned hardwood floors, bright white walls, and panoramic skyline views through over-sized windows. The central lounge area has a beamed ceiling and white lacquered floating cabinet that hides media equipment and, at the far end of the room, a two-stool snack bar divides the arguably somewhat diminutive dining area from the sleekly minimalist and just about entirely white kitchen. Just around the corner from the kitchen a discreet door in the lounge opens to an unexpectedly and delightfully large walk-in pantry tucked under the stairs and, at the opposite end of the open-plan main living/dining space, a sizable expanse of wall can be slid closed to convert a fairly small study/library to a definitely picayune guest bedroom with en suite bathroom. The main floor master bedroom, with open eastern exposure, has a bank of open bookshelves, two walk-in closets off an L-shaped dressing hall, and a gray marble floored bathroom with glass-fronted steam shower. A walnut paneled open staircase with slender brass balusters and a luxuriously leather wrapped handrail leads to a roomy secondary living room flanked by two bedrooms, each with private bathroom, generous closet space, and open city views. First rate attention to detail carries through even to the spacious second floor laundry room where at least one wall is exquisitely sheathed in walnut paneling and the myriad high-tech creature comforts include a comprehensive lighting program, central air-conditioning with air purifying system, and an integrated sound system. Listing details show the penthouse carries mouth-drying monthly maintenance charges of $8,181, an amount, according to this property gossip’s bejeweled abacus, it would take a $9-per-hour New York State minimum wage worker nearly six months to earn in pre-tax wages.
The limestone and brown brick edifice, which towers over the northern edge of Washington Square Park, has long attracted rich and sometimes famous residents and current owners in the building include acclaimed architect Annabelle Selldorf, two-time Emmy winner Blythe Danner, who paid $3.125 million for her mid-floor combination unit in March 2007, and double Oscar winner Jessica Lange, who in 2013 became the sole owner of a combination unit she and former partner Sam Shepard purchased together in 2005 for $3.4 million.
Just as one might expect of a music industry demi-god who by some accounts is worth well in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars, Richards maintains a hearty handful of high-maintenance homes around the world. Since the mid-1960s he’s owned Redlands, an historic country spread about 90 miles southwest of central London in the West Sussex village of West Wittering. It was here, rock ‘n’ roll historians well know, that in 1967 Richards and fellow Rolling Stone Mick Jagger were famously arrested during a drug raid. The Richards-Hansens have long escaped to a nearly two-acre ocean-front getaway on the private Parrot Cay islet in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where other villa owners include fashion world queen bee Donna Karan and action-flick staple Bruce Willis, and back in the United States, the couple have long made their primary home a nearly eight acre estate about an hour outside of Midtown Manhattan, in scenically rural Weston, CT, that encompasses a custom-built main residence of not quite 8,300-square-feet plus an almost 3,100-square-foot guesthouse along with a swimming pool, tennis court, Japanese gardens, and what Vogue magazine described in 2010 as “the loveliest little greenhouse in all of suburbia.”
Listing photos and floor plan: Sotheby’s International Realty
