SELLER: Uma Thurman
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $6.25 million
SIZE: (approx.) 2,800 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Having moved more than a year ago to a 13-room apartment in the historically high-nosed Sutton Place enclave that she acquired in late 2013 for $10 million — a bit more on that in a minute — Uma Thurman has, hence, hardly surprisingly hoisted her three-unit combination duplex in New York City’s upscale but low-key Gramercy Park ‘hood on the market with an asking price of $6.25 million. The Oscar-nominated “Pulp Fiction” and “Kill Bill” star first moved into the building — a handsome if somewhat somber 12-story limestone and brown-brick edifice built in 1910 — some 15 years ago with her second ex-husband Ethan Hawke. The showbiz pair were divorced in 2005 and, the following October, sold their formerly shared three-bedroom duplex in a private, off-market deal for $8.6 million. About three months before she and Mister Hawke sold their former marital home, Miz Thurman paid $2.65 million for a two-unit combination duplex in the same building. She subsequently spent five years and no doubt a considerable fortune on a soup-to-nuts renovation of the duplex during which she lived in a West Village townhouse bought in 2006 for $9.5 million “through a third party,” according to The New York Times, and sold in 2011 for $12 million. In July 2012, not so long after she returned to the freshly rehabbed duplex and at almost exactly the same time she gave birth to her third child with her now ex-boyfriend, globe-trotting French financier Arpad “Arki” Busson, Miz Thurman shelled out another $1.55 million for a neighboring one-bedroom and one-bathroom unit that was quickly renovated and incorporated into the duplex.
All together the three units come to about 2,800 square feet, according to online marketing materials, with five bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and not exactly insignificant monthly maintenance charges of $7,779. There’s a an elegantly austere, neo-classical style marble fireplace in the 24-foot long corner living room and the neighboring dining room has French doors to a slender balcony with oblique and building-framed but otherwise unobstructed views over the manicured and private Gramercy Park, a manicured, two-acre private green space accessible only to the lucky few residents who live in apartments that surround the park and transfer with a much-coveted deeded key to the secured gates. A tin ceiling provides a soupçon of historical gravitas, and a live edge black walnut slab on the double wide central peninsula makes a smart, organic counter-balance to the otherwise minimalist kitchen fitted with gleaming white Namibian marble countertops, imported white lacquer cabinets and — natch — an extensive assemblage of high-quality appliances.
Upstairs two good-sized guest or family bedrooms, one of them with a built-in desk and bunk bed, share a vintage-style hall bathroom with completely tiled walls, antique pull-chain toilet, and heated slate stone floors. Also upstairs is the master bedroom with horsehair upholstered walls, fitted walk-in closet, and a compartmentalized bathroom that incorporates a snazzy, crackle-tiled hammam — a Turkish-style steam room — with arched ceiling, heated marble-tile floor, built-in marble bench, open shower space, and two-person soaking tub. Back downstairs, double pocket doors in the living room slide open to a small library that links through to a fourth bedroom that shares a Jack ‘n’ Jill-style bathroom with a larger bedroom that includes a 17-foot long dressing room lined with custom wardrobes.
As mentioned above, Miz Thurman, who co-starred last year in the star-studded eight-episode miniseries “The Slap” and will appear on the silver screen later this year in the also star-studded comedy “The Brits Are Coming,” decamped her Gramercy Park duplex for a 13-room apartment in the Sutton Place enclave, just east of Midtown, that she bought at the tail end of 2013 for $10 million. It seems at least highly likely the 5,310-square-foot, single-level spread, bought from prolific romance novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, has undergone at least a cosmetic redo if not some reconfiguration, but at the time she purchased the single-level, East River overlooking sprawler it had four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms plus a service wing with two staff bedrooms and another bathroom. Our research suggests that in addition to her fancy-pants River House digs Miz Thurman also maintains a secluded rural getaway of almost 100 acres in the wooded mountains just outside of famously hippy-dippy Woodstock, New York.
