High Society - the most expensive apartment ever to be sold in New York
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Exclusive is a word that is bandied about quite a lot these days, but it can certainly be applied to a duplex in 740 Park Avenue that has come on the market recently in New York.
According to the New York Observer, estate agent Edward Lee Cave is "quietly taking offers".
It has been reported that the property is not openly on the market, but that the vendor, Mrs Courtney Sale Ross, widow of the late Time Warner chairman Steve Ross, is testing the waters.
When it sells, it will reportedly be "the most expensive apartment ever sold in New York" -- which means over $60m (€46m) at the very least.
"There will only be 10 people who can see the apartment. Because there will only be 10 people who are appropriate to see it" Cave is quoted as saying.
However:"If somebody very, very, very important calls me, I will run it by her."
The management fees were roughly €10,000 in 2005 -- the last time a home in one of the apartments was reportedly sold. Rand V Araskog, the former chairman and chief executive of the ITT Corporation, sold his duplex to the hedge fund executive David Ganek for around $20m (€15.4m).
Apparently the apartment wasn't up to much, unlike Mrs Sale Ross' unit, which is thought to have 32 rooms and has been described as one of the best in the building.
The best apartment is currently home to billionaire Blackstone chairman Stephen Schwarzman -- who made it to number 53 in the Forbes American rich list this year.
But being filthy rich is not enough to move into 740 Park Avenue, the subject of a fascinating book by Michael Gross called 740 Park -- The Story of the World's Richest Building. (www.mgross.com)
You have also to pass muster with the co-operative. Media types haven't been very successful in the past. Among those whose money wasn't welcome were Barbra Streisand, Barbara Walters, Neil Sedaka and Joan Crawford.
Residents of the building, built in 1930 by James T Lee, a grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, are mainly business types and heiresses. Revlon boss Ronald Perelman lived there with his first wife; while Ronald Lauder of the Estee Lauder cosmetics company lives there at present.
Names of past residents are instantly recognisable -- Vanderbilt, Bouvier, Rockerfeller and Chrysler to name but a few. Any Irish millionaires with aspirations to live among the world's richest and most socially acceptable would do well to bear in mind that stereotypes live long in the minds of the ridiculously rich.
In his book, Mr Gross reports that a past president of the board liked to take long lunches where he would discuss the failings of the "genetically inferior blacks, Irish, Italians and Jews."
So not our sort, dahling.
