We're still at The Sherry

The $95 million apartment of the world’s richest travel agent remains for sale after six months of marketing

The Sherry-Netherland is one of New York’s finest skyscraper apartment-hotels and one of the city’s best known landmarks. The world’s richest travel agent and co-founder of Liberty Travel, Gilbert Haroche, who occupies the entire 18^th floor with his wife Charlene, put his apartment there on the market for $95,000,000 in September 2012 but six months later it remains for sale.

Situated at 781 Fifth Avenue, this 7-bedroomed co-op features over 8,965 square foot of accommodation and terraces that have been created by combining a number of adjacent apartments. It has been “lavishly” decorated and though considered one of the finest properties in this 38-storey building, it does not feature the most spacious of reception rooms for a property of this price and footprint.

The 570-foot tall Sherry-Netherland was built in 1927 and is named after Louis Sherry (1855 – 1926), a restaurateur, caterer, confectioner and “wine addict”. Many regard it as “the best building in New York” and of the skyscraper, one architectural critic, The New York Times’ Carter B. Horsley, comments:

“Other buildings are larger, taller, more ornate, more complex, and have superb locations and far more spectacular interiors, but The Sherry Netherland has a “drop dead” elegance and exoticism that is both flamboyant and reserved”.

“What pushes The Sherry Netherland to the top, of course, is its top – a soaring, elaborate minaret with delicate open widow’s walk atop an asymmetrical roof reminiscent of French châteaux, all in delightfully green aged copper. The asymmetrical form of the tower significantly improves its aesthetics from most angles and if it had been a square tower it would be just another great campanile, but not a visual force with which to be reckoned. The top’s chimneys and large protruding gargoyles, furthermore, grasp and tame the sky like some giant’s gnarled fist”.

The apartment-hotel was designed by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Khan and contains 165 apartments that were converted to co-ops in 1954. The hotel itself includes 54 rooms and suites and the cheapest currently available, Apartment 11, is available to purchase at a price of $500,000 through the hotel management.

The Sherry-Netherland stands on the site of the Astor family owned Hotel Netherland that had been built in the early 1890s. Demolition commenced in the winter of 1926 and construction of the new building began before the year was out. This was interrupted by a dramatic fire that ignited a debate about the ability of the available technology to put out fires in high-rise buildings.

During this same period, as William K. Vanderbilt’s mansion, diagonally across Fifth Avenue from The Sherry-Netherland, was being demolished to make way for the Bergdorf Goodman store, the builders were able to acquire high relief carved limestone panels and ornamental frieze roundels from there. These were installed in The Sherry-Netherland’s vaulted lobby and give it to this day a look that is “discretely lavish, but not grandiose”.

As the building was constructed in the Prohibition era, The Sherry-Netherland lacked the major dining facilities that other similar apartment-hotels featured. Today, though, residents, who have variously included Diana Ross and Charlie Rose, benefit from daily housekeeping and turndown services, 24-hour concierge and room service from the ground floor restaurant, Harry Cipriani.

Realtors are quick to state that The Sherry-Netherland offers “more than a place of residence: it’s a way of living” but whoever purchases the Haroche residence will need to be incredibly rich. The monthly maintenance fees for Apartment 17 are an incredible $60,000.

Apartment 17, 18^th Floor, The Sherry-Netherland, New York, NY 10022 is for sale through Kathy Sloane of Brown Harris Stevens. For more details, contact her on +1 212 905 9258 or email her at [email protected]

View details at: http://www.bhsusa.com/manhattan/upper-east-side/781-fifth-avenue/coop/3452636#

For more on The Sherry-Netherland, go to: http://www.sherrynetherland.com