Village Townhouse Sale Breaks Record

NEW YORK — The $37.2 million sale of an 1838 Greek Revival town house in Greenwich Village has set another record in New York City.

The price for this brick and limestone building, perched in the middle of a prime tree-lined street, at 37 W. 10th St., is the highest amount paid for a single house in downtown Manhattan. It was also the city’s most expensive closing for the month of July, according to property records.

The home, as it turns out, is on the same street where the previous record was set in 2007, when 11-13 W. 10th was purchased for $34.5 million. (That town house was listed again in February, with a $59.5 million price tag, but was removed from the market in July.)

Several other pricey town house transactions also took place last month. Downtown, a six-story house at 150 Reade St. in Tribeca and a Federal-style house (carriage house included) at 131 Charles St. each sold for $10.5 million, while a house at 40 Leroy St. sold for $11.75 million and a house at 18 Grove St. sold for $24.5 million. On the Upper East Side, a five-story house at 238 E. 68th St. sold for $11.15 million.

“There have been a lot of trades in town houses in the last three to four months,” said Robert Dankner, the president of Prime Manhattan Residential who represented the sellers in the record sale without formally listing it. “There’s no comparison in the value you realize in a town house versus a condo or a co-op.”

Among some of the other noteworthy sales in July: the West Village apartment that actor James Gandolfini once shared with his former wife; the Upper East Side apartment where noted designers Lella and Massimo Vignelli lived until their deaths; and the Central Park West apartment of film producer Bob Weinstein.

Also, the SoHo penthouse that rocker Jon Bon Jovi sold for a tidy profit three years ago changed hands again, though at a steep loss for the seller.

And last month’s runner-up sale, at $29.95 million, was a duplex penthouse at 152 Elizabeth St., a new condominium in Nolita designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando. The 5,603-square-foot apartment, which had a $35 million asking price, has four bedrooms and four and a half baths, according to the listing with Compass. There is also 3,240 square feet of outdoor space that includes a rooftop terrace equipped with a reflecting pool, outdoor kitchen, shower and soaking tub.

The Greenwich Village town house, between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, is five stories high with roughly 9,800 square feet of interior space. There are six bedrooms, six full baths and three half baths, and six fireplaces, according to Dankner.

The sellers were Rebekah Caudwell, a British interior designer, and her husband Nicolas Dupart, a real estate developer. The buyers were identified by Dankner as a New York family that planned to use the house as a primary residence. Meris Blumstein of the Corcoran Group represented the buyer; she declined to comment.

Dankner said he had showed the home to several people and received five competing offers.

Caudwell and Dupart had bought the house in 2012 for $9.5 million. Soon after, they commenced a top-to-bottom gut renovation that transformed the once rundown building with a Pepto-Bismol pink facade into a designer showcase, with a landscaped interior courtyard, a roof deck with outdoor kitchen, and a finished basement outfitted with a movie theater, gym and sauna.

The property originally came with a separate carriage house, but that was connected to the main house via a breezeway and turned into a chef’s kitchen, with 20-foot vaulted ceilings. The annual property taxes on the house are $102,936, according to Dankner. The Gandolfini apartment, No. 2GH at 99 Jane St., sold for $6.2 million; it was originally listed for $7.5 million last October. The 3,200-square-foot residence, a combination of two units, has four bedrooms and four baths.

Gandolfini, best known for his portrayal of the mob boss Tony Soprano in the “Sopranos” TV series, had lived there with his first wife, Marcy Gandolfini, and their son before their divorce in 2002. The deed to the property was transferred to Marcy Gandolfini, a film producer, the following year. James Gandolfini died in 2013.

The Vignelli Family Trust sold a duplex apartment at 130 E. 67th St. for $6 million, which was $500,000 below the original list price in January. The co-op unit, on the sixth and seventh floors, has 3,900 square feet with three bedrooms and three and a half baths and a living room with nearly 20-foot ceilings and a towering leaded-glass window.

This was the first and primary home in New York City for Vignelli, who died in 2014, and his wife, who died two years later. The Italian-born couple are best known for their corporate branding — they were responsible, for example, for the American Airlines double-A logo and Bloomingdale’s signature brown paper bags. They bought the home in 1978 for around $250,000.

Weinstein, the younger brother of the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, did not make much, if any, money on the sale of his duplex co-op at 211 Central Park West, which is known as the Beresford. He bought the unit in 2005 for $20 million, and sold it for $20.5 million.

The 7,000-square-foot apartment, between 81st and 82nd Streets, has five bedrooms and six and a half baths, along with a library and staff quarters. There are also two terraces that offer panoramic views of Central Park, the Museum of Natural History and the Manhattan skyline.

Weinstein co-founded Miramax and the Weinstein Co. with his older brother, Harvey, and was responsible for hit movies like “Scream” and “Scary Movie.” He struggled to keep the Weinstein Company afloat after several women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct stretching back decades. Bob Weinstein stepped down from the company’s board in mid-July.

Also selling at a loss was a duplex penthouse at 158 Mercer St., aka 583 Broadway. Bon Jovi had bought this apartment in 2007 for $24 million and sold it in 2015 for $34 million to Gerhard R. Andlinger, who ran a private equity firm based in Tarrytown, New York. Andlinger died in January, and a managing director at his firm, Ivar W. Mitchell, sold it for $26.5 million. The original list price had been $38 million.

The sprawling penthouse has 7,452 square feet of interior space, with six bedrooms and six and a half baths, along with a screening room, gym, staff quarters and rooftop terraces that provide stunning cityscape views.