A Fifth Avenue Co-op Tops the List of Sales in May

The Four Percent

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The priciest co-op sale so far this year occurred on the Upper East Side, as several more big closings took place throughout New York in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

Many of the deals that closed in May were in contract before the coronavirus pandemic struck in New York, or came together quickly before the lockdown and avoided the disruptions in the real estate industry brought on by sheltering-in-place rules.

The full-floor apartment, at 4 East 66th Street (a.k.a. 845 Fifth Avenue) was bought by the financier and philanthropist J. Christopher Flowers and his wife, Anne W. Flowers, for $43 million, marking the city’s most expensive sale in the month of May. (The record price for a co-op was set in 2015, with the $77.5 million sale of a duplex at nearby 834 Fifth.)

At the ultra-pricey 220 Central Park South, two sponsor units were acquired by a single anonymous buyer for a total of $28.6 million, though both sales had been in contract long before the pandemic surfaced.

There were a few luxury townhouse purchases as well, including a newly constructed manse in the Lenox Hill neighborhood and an Upper West Side brownstone bought by the “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and his wife, Elly Blankenbuehler, a physician assistant.

Also last month, Alexandre de Betak, a fashion-show and events producer, sold his co-op loft in SoHo to Dick Costolo, the former chief executive of Twitter, and his wife, Lorin Costolo.

Credit…Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

The Flowerses’ co-op, on the eighth floor, was purchased from a trust set up for Ezra K. Zilkha, an Iraqi-born financier and investor who died last fall. It was an off-market deal, so few details about the residence are available. Most of the units in the limestone building on Fifth Avenue and 66th Street are around 7,500 square feet and occupy full floors. They have high ceilings, grand galleries and direct Central Park views.

Mr. Flowers, a former partner at Goldman Sachs who runs his own private equity firm, has been an active player in Manhattan’s high-end market. In 2006, he paid $53 million for the Harkness mansion on East 75th Street, which at the time was a residential townhouse record. (He ended up selling the building five years later to the art dealer Larry Gagosian for $36.5 million.)

The couple’s new apartment house, designed by James E.R. Carpenter and built in 1920, has been home to a number of notable people, among them Paul G. Allen, a founder of Microsoft, and the socialite Veronica Hearst.

The recent closings at 220 Central Park South included a half-floor apartment on the 58th floor that sold for nearly $26.8 million and a studio on the 19th for $1.8 million. The buyer of both was listed as 220 CPS Unit 53B L.L.C.

The larger unit has 3,322 square feet, with three bedrooms, three and a half baths and a 28-square-foot balcony, while the studio has 472 square feet, according to the most recent offering plan.

Nearly all the apartments in the 70-story limestone tower, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, are now spoken for. This includes the four adjacent units, on the 50th through 53rd floors, acquired by the hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin in early 2019 for a record $240 million.

The mansion at 118 East 76th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues, was sold for $25 million by the Chetrit Group, a privately held real estate development firm. It had been under contract since late December. The buyer’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company ZMMSG.

The home is one of three townhouses created from six brownstones that the Chetrit Group acquired in 2007 from Lenox Hill Hospital for $26 million. The facades were preserved, while the interiors were gutted and rebuilt. (One of the houses, No. 110, sold for almost $40.3 million in 2018, reportedly to the industrialist and philanthropist David Koch.)

The sprawling building that sold last month is five stories high and 32 feet wide, and covers more than 13,000 square feet. It contains eight bedrooms, 10 full baths and three half-baths, according to the listing with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The master suite encompasses the third floor and has three bathrooms, two large dressing rooms and a sitting room.

The home offers contemporary finishes and myriad amenities including a screening room, a wet bar and wine cellar in the basement, and a rear garden off the massive formal dining room. The top level has a 36-foot indoor lap pool, glass-enclosed gym, sauna and a landscaped limestone terrace.

Updated June 5, 2020
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And to get to all of them: an elevator and a grand spiral staircase.

The Blankenbuehlers bought a five-story, 5,141-square-foot brownstone at 121 West 85th Street near Columbus Avenue that is also is packed with amenities.

The basement contains a wine cellar, recreation room and gym, and there is plenty of outdoor space, including private terraces on the third and fourth floors, a multilevel deck off the parlor floor and a rear garden with paver stones and mature trees.

The closing price for the fully renovated house, in contract since late February, was $7.1 million, slightly above its nearly $7 million asking price. The seller was listed as Martin Guillermo Marron, the head of investment and private banking in Latin America for J.P. Morgan.

Mr. Blankenbuehler, a choreographer and stage director, has won three Tony Awards for his work on the Broadway shows “In the Heights,” “Bandstand” and “Hamilton.”

Alexandre de Betak, who has choreographed countless fashion shows (think Victoria’s Secret) over the last three decades, sold his two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of 136 Grand Street in SoHo for $8 million. This was below the original $8.8 million asking price when it was put on the market last fall.

The meticulously revamped, 4,000-square-foot space retains the bones of a downtown industrial loft, with high ceilings, immense windows and exposed brick, pipes, beams and columns. Mr. de Betak added a few whimsical flourishes during his two-plus years of renovations, among them a swing near the kitchen, a tatami room with sake dispensers, and a hidden party room with a stripper pole.

Mr. Costolo, the new owner, served as chief executive of Twitter from 2010 to 2015.