Palazzo Chupi

Larger-than-life art star Julian Schnabel has cut the price on his outrageous Palazzo Chupi (above) in NYC yet again, and is now asking only $27.9 million for five floors combined of the pink palace. The 7,676-sq.-ft. spread consists of a duplex and triplex penthouse that were originally listed at $32 million and $27 million respectively when they were our Estate of the Day last year. The new price reflects an astounding discount of $31.1 million, less than the triplex itself originally. The apartments are also available separately with the triplex priced at $14.95 million and the duplex $12.95 million, Curbed reports. The previous reduction had them at $20 million and $18 million, respectively. As my colleague Deirdre Woollard reported recently, Schnabel has also been trying to rent the apartments out for $50,000 and $40,000 per month, respectively. Meanwhile he has had to sell a Picasso to finance the debt incurred in the building's construction.

We recently saw that artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel was putting his prized Picasso on the market to settle loans associated with his rose-colored Palazzo Chupi apartment building in New York City. We've discussed Schnabel's pink folly a bunch of times, watching as the penthouse fell from a starting price of $32 million to $22 million with no sale. Now the Wall Street Journal reveals that because Schnabel can't sell he has decided to rent. His top-floor triplex and duplex listed for $22 million and $19 million respectively, are up for rent for $50,000 and $40,000 a month. You can also still buy both apartments, either separately or together for $41 million which represents a total of $18 million off the original prices of both apartments.

Artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel has a problem, he can't sell his apartments. We've discussed Schnabel's folly, the rose-colored Palazzo Chupi multiple times and a recent Huffington Post piece revealed that the penthouse has now been discounted from $32 million to $22 million. The real estate downturn is prompting Schabel to part with one of his dearest possessions, his prized Picasso. Schnabel bought Femme au Chapeau way back in 1989. The nearly six-foot canvas painted when Picasso was nearly 89 mirrors Schnabel's own penchant for creating outsize works.

Schnabel has had the painting in his home for 20 years and the New York Times reports that it most recently hung in his living room in Palazzo Chupi. It will be sold at the Christie's auction on May 6 and is estimated to bring $8 million to $12 million. Schnabel told the Times that the sale of the painting will take care of a loan he took out with Commerce Bank that used part of his art collection, including the Picasso, as collateral.

From the LA Times Hot Properties:
--Actor Christopher Lloyd has put his smaller house in Montecito, shown above, for sale for $3.6 million. The elegant home has two bedrooms, bamboo floors and a raised bamboo pergola overlooking the pool and spa. His other home in the area which was listed in 2007 for $11.27 million and was an estate of the day, has been taken off the market.
--Mark Wahlberg has listed his house in Beverly Hills at $15.9 million. The listing is here.
--Basketball player Elton Brand has sold his Hollywood Hills home for $4.55 million.
--Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon has listed his home in Brentwood. it's our estate of the day later today.
Another "Buffy" and "Angel" veteran, writer David Greenwalt, recently sold his house in the Pacific Palisades for $2.958 million.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--The asking price for the triplex penthouse at artist Julian Schnabel's, pink Palazzo Chupi building in the West Village has been cut by $5.5 million to $24 million. It was our estate of the day earlier in the year.
--Quarterback Tom Brady has cut the price on his Time Warner Center apartment from $18.29 million to $17.75 million. We'll be checking this one tomorrow.
--Cosmetics mogul Adrien Arpel and her husband, Ronald Newman, have paid $5.9 million for a seven-room co-op at 900 Fifth Ave.
--One of the Hamptons' premier properties, Fordune, will be listed for rent next year. This may be the first time since Henry Ford II owned the 42-acre oceanfront Southampton property. it will rent for $600,000 to use it from August through Labor Day next year and has 12 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, a game room, a library, a large formal dining room, staff rooms and a commercial kitchen.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Cher has paid $1,400,000 to purchase a two-bedroom, 1,455-square-foot house in West Hollywood,California. It may be a house for her daughter, Chastity.
--Regis Philbin has put his Greenwich, Connecticut home on the market for $5.4 million. It was our estate of the day on Friday.
--Brad Garrett finally has sold his 10,223-square-foot mansion in Hidden Hills, California. The most recent listing price was $8.35 million.
--Little more than a year after he sold it for $2.9 million, the former house of fashion critic Steven Cojocaru in the Hollywood Hills is back on the market, for $3.695 million. The property website is here.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--The home used to film ABC's "Bachelor" shows is for sale and the price has been dropped to $8.75 million, down from just under $13 million. You can see listing pics from when the home was listed at $11.5 million here.
--Last month, philanthropist Carroll Petrie sold a Palm Beach, Fla., house for $3 million, $500,000 less than she paid less than a year earlier, to investor John D. Firestone, of the tire-manufacturing family. In May, she paid $7.45 million for a 6,700-square-foot, five-bedroom home about a mile farther south.

From Newsday's Real LI:
-- A 4.08-acre property on Meadow Lane in Southampton will be listed soon for $38 million. According to public records, the oceanfront mansion was owned by Virginia Salomon, who died last month. She was married to Citigroup's honorary chairman William R. Salomon (and former managing partner at Salomon Brothers, Inc.) for more than 70 years. The 6,000 square foot house, built in 1992, has six bedrooms and eight baths, with a gunite pool and is located just west of designer Calvin Klein's home.
--Hairspray actress Nikki Blonsky may or may not be leaving Great Neck. Her family's home was recently seen on the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island for $649,000.
--Hilary Duff's longtime boyfriend, New York Islanders center Mike Comrie has purchased a condo in Garden City.


From the Real Estalker:
--Former Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre has listed his Wisconsin home for $475,000. It was our estate of the day on Saturday.
--Technology guru Halsey Minor is not only trying to sell his home in Bel Air, he is said to be spending $15 million to renovate Le Petit Trianon in San Francisco, which he bought in 2007. The home was on the market for a while (I first got wind of it in 2005) and is said to be in some disrepair.
--The listing for the $24 million Goldwyn mansion has been temporary pulled from the market so that it can be renovated.
--Baseball player Tom Glavine and his wife Christine have put their home in Alpharetta, Georgia on the market for $3.75 million. We'll be looking at this one as an estate of the day on Monday.
--Cameron Diaz is said to be house shopping in Beverly Hills.
--More Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner real estate rumors, this time it is said that they have put their home in Brentwood on the market for around $8 million.
--Tae-Bo king Billy Blanks is getting a divorce and has put his Hidden Hills home on the market for $11.5 million. The listing is here.

From The Sun:
--Robbie Williams has picked up a seven-bedroom mansion in the Beverly Park community in Los Angeles for over $20 million.

From ONTD:
--Lauren Conrad of The Hills has been spotted house shopping in her home town of Laguna Beach.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
-- Kurt A. Locher, formerly a Lehman Brothers managing director recently bought a $5.25 million apartment at 500 West End Avenue. His old place on Park Avenue is still on the market for $2.495 million. We discussed this one earlier this week.
--According to numbers prepared for The Observer by research site StreetEasy, the days of easy luxury apartment sales are over. As of Monday, Manhattan had 168 super-luxury listings asking at least $15 million each which is nearly twice the number from autumn 2006.
--Former investment banker Jack Grubman has put his New York City townhouse on the market for $32 million. It was our estate of the day on Thursday.
--Sarah Allentuch, a former assistant to Woody Allen, and her husband, Greg Mottola, who directed Superbad recently bought a $2.6 million apartment at the new One York condo.
----An East River mansion, 7 Sutton Square, has sold for $32.5 million, well above its $25 million asking price. The seller is William F. Reilly, a retired magazine mogul and the buyer is listed anonymously, though a billing address is given care of Wildenstein & Co., which suggests that the house now belongs to the art collector Guy Wildenstein.

From the Daily Mail:
--James Bond star Daniel Craig has picked up a £4million apartment near Regent's Park in London.

Larger-than-life artist/auteur Julian Schnabel has slashed the price on a duplex in his controversial Pepto-Bismol-pink Palazzo Chupi by more than $2 million. The apartment in question, one of several luxe spreads in the building, was originally listed at $27 million earlier this year, then quickly increased to $32 million, but Schnabel just lowered the asking price to $29.5 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. Richard Gere bought one of the lower-floor apartments for $12 million last year and recently put it back on the market for $18 million.

The apartment's Old World features include 14-ft. tall plaster walls, massive hand carved fireplaces, handmade bronze railings, solid stone and tile floors, and wood ceilings, all hand-selected by Schnabel -- as do those in the rest of the building, which is featured in Vanity Fair's May issue. The price cut is probably indicative of the slightly slumping Manhattan real estate market, which many feel to be mostly recession-proof. You can view the listing here.

For months the possibility of living with Richard Gere has been one of the quiet selling points for Palazzo Chupi, director Julian Schnabel's monument to his own Schnabeliciousness in New York's West Village. Now that dream is over, Gere's full-floor, four-bedroom apartment is listed with Sotheby's. Gere's apartment has some benefits over the over two apartments which are listed at $27 million and $32 million, mainly that it's a little less over-the-top and doesn't have that odd avocado-colored kitchen. Curbed states that Gere bought the apartment in September for $12 million and has listed at $17,995,000. Is New York ready for "Venice in Manhattan?" We'll have to wait and see how long these places stay on the market.

UPDATE: As of January 2009, Gere's home is listed at $15 million.

It is fitting on Oscar Sunday to look at a building actually owned by an Oscar nominee, director Julian Schnabel. Schnabel directed the heartbreakingly beautiful movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." This was Schnabel's third movie (he also directed Basquiat and Before Night Falls).

I'm a bit biased about the case of Julian Schnabel. I've had a big crush on him since first seeing his broken plate art in the 1980s. Since then as his ample frame has grown, so too has my affection. The prospect of seeing what he will wear to the Oscars makes me giddy after all he's been known to show up at awards in a pajama top or in a tablecloth-like sarong. While lately his yellow-lensed glasses aren't winning my heart, I love a man willing to flaunt a big hairy chest.

The Schnabel is a genius and no one knows that better than he does. His ego has also gained a fair bit of attention. Which brings us to Palazzo Chupi, the greatest monument to that ego. The building which is colored "Pompeii Red" but often photographs as pink has caused no end of controversy and speculation in New York's West Village. Richard Gere and his model wife have bought in here as has a finance person from Credit Suisse. Rumor has it that both Bono and Madonna had considered but have decided against life at Chupi.

The NY Times has the listing for the $27 million duplex and Curbed has the floorplan for the penthouse triplex. There are details to love here. The homes have a very European feel and the Schnabel is a man with an accomplished eye so you get cast bronze door handles, lovely stone fireplaces and cast stone railings. The sense of space here is lovely, I'm not sure of the ceiling height but there is just a real expansiveness here. The chandeliers alone speak of a certain type of eccentricity.

There are also things not to love. The kitchen with its green tiles is just a wee bit too reminiscent of the types of older kitchens you usually have to destroy to build your dream kitchen. I know New York is a dine out city but still for that much money you want to be able to cook and or entertain in your kitchen. The basement pool, at least as shown in the recent issue of Vanity Fair, scares me, it says more horror movie than a place to do your morning laps. You aren't getting that much space for your cash here either. The $27 million duplex offers 3,850 square feet and the $32 million triplex is 3,845 square feet. Not small but a whole lot of money for the size. What I want to know is how much Schnabel access the price buys you. Do you get to hang out with him and his ethereally beautiful wife and his glamorous children? Does he invite you to dinner parties and let you look at his paintings in progress? Because honestly, that's the only way these apartments are actually worth the price.

UPDATE: The penthouse is now listed at $22 million and the duplex is at $19 million.