That ‘Sir Shifty’ Philip Green will get a £50 million personal pay day from the sale of TopShop whilst 20,000 lose their jobs is an utter outrage
‘Badly behaved boozy Brit abroad’ Sir Philip Green likes to spray champagne rather than sip it and now with news that he and his wife are getting a £50 million personal pay day whilst 20,000 lose their jobs at TopShop, the public will be quite rightly outraged if he’s spotted brandishing a bottle or ten of bubbly.
Whilst the temperamental tycoon’s sister, Elizabeth, quite rightly told ‘Sir Shifty’ and ‘Lady Greed’ to man-up and say sorry as “an expression of compassion and responsibility” in January, on Saturday the Guardian reported that 1,155 unsecured creditors of the Green’s collapsed company – amongst them clothing suppliers and landlords – will receive less than 1% of the money owed to them.
Debts to the public purse via HMRC, another creditor, are not included in that tranche of debts also and what also must be remembered is that Sir Philip and Lady Green will still get to live in luxury just as 20,000 of their former staff head off into penury.
Shame on this pair of pigs and shame on Boris Johnson for not already stripping this robber baron of his very much undeserved title.
Join the 251,000 people already calling for the forfeiture committee to strip Sir Philip Green of his knighthood on Change.org by clicking here.
Pictured top: Asset stripper Sir Philip Green with his one-time chum and now jailed sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein.
Sir Shifty’s £50 million Pay Day – Shameless scumbags Sir Philip and Lady Green on a dinghy with two crew members. Presumably, these two chaps will not suffer the same fate as 20,000 other former workers of theirs.Sir Shifty’s £50 million Pay Day – Tubby twerp Sir Philip Green and his family will be able to continue to ‘live-it-up’ on their £100 million superyacht, Lionheart. His former TopShop staff, meanwhile, will now find themselves living on the breadline.
Mansion in controversial compound in The Boltons, SW10 for sale for £50 million; the setting has seen court cases and pyrotechnic partiesinvolving a self-declared “Relentless” multi-millionaire
One of London’s most expensive streets, The Boltons, is generally thought of as a perfectly peaceful place. Its past occupants include authors such as Jeffrey Archer and Beatrix Potter, yet in December 2018 one of its residents, a “flamboyant multi-millionaire and former barrister” named Giles Mackay was slapped with a £7,500 on-the-spot-fine. He had breached a noise abatement order after hosting an all-night Halloween rave complete with pyrotechnics and “thumping bass music.”
A Pyrotechnic Pad – Controversial Giles Mackay, pictured with his “on-off” Russian squeeze Khristina Sysoeva, developed the three Boltons Place houses between 2004 and 2006 with two other businessmen. The selling agents did not comment as to which of the three houses is now for sale.
Mackay, who the Daily Mail noted to have been in and “on-off relationship” with a Meet The Russians ‘star’ named Khristina Sysoeva and whom was previously issued with a similar order in 2015, also found himself subject to press attention in 2012 after losing a court case to the developers of his Boltons Place home.
The plainly temperamental businessman – whom claimed his middle name was “Relentless” due to having “the money and anger to push on and make sure you deliver or get punished” in one of 3,700 “abusive emails” to Walter Lilly & Co. – joined one Paul Daniel and Stephen West to build Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Boltons Place on the site of a former BT telephone exchange in 2004.
In April 2015, the Mirror reported on one of the houses being sold to an offshore company for £51,171,950. They lauded it as a “perfect mansion” and pointed out that a further staggering sum of £7.6 million in stamp duty would have been paid in addition.
Now, one of the three 17,500 square foot houses, which is for sale through agents Berkeley Private Capital. Little information is shared on an OnTheMarket.com listing for the property, but of it the firm declare:
“An amazing detached mansion in Chelsea discreetly offered for sale to a serious buyer at a preferential price for a quick sale.”
“The owners are VVIP and viewings will only be entertained with full disclosure of eligibility to purchase at circa £50 million confirmed by the prospective purchaser’s solicitors.”
Those with an interest in pyrotechnics and parties need not apply.
The Numbers – Boltons Place, The Boltons, London, SW10
October 2010 – For sale for circa £50 million ($65.1 million, €55.2 million or درهم239 million).
April 2015 – One of the three houses is sold for £51,171,950 ($66.6 million, €56.5 million or درهم244.5 million) on an asking price of £55 million ($71.6 million, €60.7 million or درهم262.8 million).
2002 – Site of former BT telephone exchange sold to controversial businessman Giles Mackay and two other parties for £13.2 million ($17.2 million, €15.4 million or درهم63.1 million). The trio engaged Walter Lilly & Co. to build three mansions on the site at a total cost of £15,476,971 ($20.1 million, €17.1 million or درهم73.9 million) “for construction on all three plots” in March 2004. The houses were completed in 2006.
Other Notable Residents of The Boltons
Between 1999 and 2006, Madonna owned a house in The Boltons and other well-known residents have included Sir Julian and Dame Paddy Ridsdale.
8 The Boltons – Douglas Fairbanks Jr. KBE (1909 – 2000), actor, lived there in the 1950s with his wife Mary Lee Hartford, former wife Huntington Hartford, the A&P supermarket heir.
14 The Boltons – Otho Stuart (1863 – 1930), Shakespearean actor-manager, lived there, exact dates unknown.
19 The Boltons – The Rt. Hon. Anthony Crosland (1918 – 1977), Labour Party politician, author and one-time lover of Roy Jenkins, lived there, exact dates unknown.
20 The Boltons (also known as ‘The Grove’) – Colin MacInnes (1914 – 1976), author, lived there, exact dates unknown. For a time in the 20th century, the building also served as Our Lady’s Convent along with 21 The Boltons.
24 The Boltons – Sir William Gilbert (1836 – 1911), playwright and one half of Gilbert and Sullivan, lived in the house between 1877 and 1884 and wrote six of his best known comic operas there beginning with The Sorcerer in 1877, HMS Pinafore in 1878, The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, Patience in 1881, Iolanthe in 1882 and Princess Ida in 1884. Gilbert moved from No. 24 The Boltons in 1884 to a newly built house nearby at No. 39 Harrington Gardens.
29 The Boltons – Used as an infant school for fifteen years after the Second World War.
Cheapest, smallest house on the best side of one of London’s most sought after streets, The Boltons, comes up for sale; the tardis like building was home to novelist-politician Jeffrey Archer and his scientist wife Mary in the 1970s
No. 24a The Boltons is one of the smallest houses on “the fourth most expensive street in Britain,” but it is still anything but insubstantial at 3,123 square feet.
The tardis-like Victorian townhouse is wedged between two mansions and was converted from a coach house for Aston Martin racing team driver Noël Cunningham-Reid in 1960.
Novelist-politician Lord Archer and his scientist wife Dame Mary owned the property between 1972 and 1976.
The couple were forced to sell the house after Jeffrey Archer supposedly “lost over £400,000 in a bad investment” in the summer of 1974.
Jeffrey Archer subsequently made a fortune as a novelist and then after a glittering career in politics, was jailed in 2001 for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
The house was sold again subsequently for £3.8 million in 2007 and is now for sale for £6.5 million; the average price of houses on the street is £32.5 million according to Zoopla.
Other residents of The Boltons have variously included Arab royals, Madonna and Sir William Gilbert, one half of Gilbert and Sullivan.
In May 2017, we featured 6 The Boltons after its asking price was slashed from £39.5 million to ‘just’ £30 million, whilst in April 2015, a more modern house at the upper end of the street named One Boltons Place sold for £51 million on an asking price of £55 million. More recently in January 2018, when 22 The Boltons was sold to a British family for £40 million that sale was described as “one of the biggest deals in the last 12 months… a notable one.” Its asking price had been an even more punchy £57.5 million.
The Boltons was developed in the 19th century by the architect George Godwin (1813 – 1888) on 11.5 acres of land previously used as market gardens. The oval shaped street consists of 13 Italianate style houses on the “favoured” western crescent and 15 more in addition on the “less sought after” eastern side. In the centre, there is a communal garden and the church of St Mary The Boltons and whilst many residents employ private security, a number of the mansions are locked up, unloved and unoccupied also.
Now, an opportunity has arisen for someone to not “buy the worst house on the best street,” but instead “buy the cheapest house on the best side of the best street” in the form of what initially appears as a narrow townhouse wedged between two very much larger semi-detached villas. No. 24a The Boltons is actually deceptive as it not only widens as it goes backwards, but also provides a very surprising 3,123 square foot of usable accommodation over four floors.
The entrance hall opens into a library area and a feeling of space is provided by a glass enclosure around the upward staircase.The drawing room space beyond has a vast window looking out westwards onto the gardens of the houses of The Little Boltons beyond.The lower ground floor dining kitchen is surprisingly bright and has a double height ceiling in part.
Laid out currently to give 3 reception rooms, 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, the “highly unusual house with off-street parking” includes a 50-foot long interconnecting entrance hall, library and reception space on the ground floor. At the rear, that opens to a partially double height dining kitchen below measuring 36-feet in length.
No. 24a was home to Jeffrey and Mary Archer in the 1970s and the street features in the spectacularly successful novelist’s 2008 bestselling work A Prisoner of Birth and his 2015 ‘Clifton Chronicles’ series novel Mightier than the Sword. It was whilst living here that the couple’s two sons were born and they supposedly only sold what Dame Mary later described to a court in 2001 as their “lovely” home after “hugely incautious” investments almost bankrupted them. “We’ve explored the further reaches of ‘for better and for worse’ than most couples,” the solar power conversion expert subsequently added.
Agents Knight Frank seek £6.5 million or £2,081 per square foot for 24a The Boltons and whomever buys it will certainly be able to laud that they live in one of the best addresses in London without it being a work of fiction. In Hyacinth Bucket-esque fashion, however, they won’t, of course, bring up that they actually live in the cheapest and smallest house there.
The Names & Numbers – 24a The Boltons, London, SW10 9SU, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, United Kingdom
July 2020 – For sale for an asking price of £6.5 million ($8.2 million, €7.3 million or درهم30 million) through estate agents Knight Frank, a figure 71.1% higher than the 2007 sale price.
March 2007 – Sold for £3.8 million ($4.9 million, €4.2 million or درهم17.6 million).
1972 to 1976 – Home to Lord Archer and Dame Mary Archer DBE, then known as Mr Jeffrey and Dr Mary Archer. Their sons, James and William, were born during this period in 1972 and 1974.
Other Notable Residents of The Boltons
Between 1999 and 2006, Madonna owned a house in The Boltons and other well-known residents have included Sir Julian and Dame Paddy Ridsdale.
8 The Boltons – Douglas Fairbanks Jr. KBE (1909 – 2000), actor, lived there in the 1950s with his wife Mary Lee Hartford, former wife Huntington Hartford, the A&P supermarket heir.
14 The Boltons – Otho Stuart (1863 – 1930), Shakespearean actor-manager, lived there, exact dates unknown.
19 The Boltons – The Rt. Hon. Anthony Crosland (1918 – 1977), Labour Party politician, author and one-time lover of Roy Jenkins, lived there, exact dates unknown.
20 The Boltons (also known as ‘The Grove’) – Colin MacInnes (1914 – 1976), author, lived there, exact dates unknown. For a time in the 20th century, the building also served as Our Lady’s Convent along with 21 The Boltons.
24 The Boltons – Sir William Gilbert (1836 – 1911), playwright and one half of Gilbert and Sullivan, lived in the house between 1877 and 1884 and wrote six of his best known comic operas there beginning with The Sorcerer in 1877, HMS Pinafore in 1878, The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, Patience in 1881, Iolanthe in 1882 and Princess Ida in 1884. Gilbert moved from No. 24 The Boltons in 1884 to a newly built house nearby at No. 39 Harrington Gardens.
29 The Boltons – Used as an infant school for fifteen years after the Second World War.
The kitchen itself is dominated by a central island unit.A lower ground floor room described as a “snug” is used presently as a space to watch television.The first floor consists of a master bedroom suite with a bedroom with an undemised balcony, a dressing room and a shower room.The dressing room itself.One of two bedrooms on the second floor.The other second floor bedroom.There are two bathrooms and two shower rooms in the house.The floor plan shows how the tardis like building gets bigger as you go further back into it.The situation of 24a The Boltons is on the “favoured” western crescent of this ritzy street.
Unmodernised ‘set’ in “rule-ridden” Albany, Piccadilly that was the London home of eccentric antiques dealer and ‘King of Chelsea’ Christopher Gibbs for sale; tour the home of the man who got Princess Margaret high on hash
Expelled from Eton “for being generally totally impossible,” antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs (1938 – 2018) was not a man one would have imagined would have liked the idea of living in a place with archaic rules. This “peacock pied piper to society in the Swinging Sixties” whose “drug consumption awed even Keith Richards,” however, surprisingly chose as his London base Albany in Mayfair and now his former residence is for sale.
“A hermitage; quiet as a lagoon, secluded from the roar of Piccadilly” according to the author Sheila, Countess of Birkenhead in her 1958 tome Peace in Piccadilly, Albany – which is only ever referred to as ‘The Albany’ by the extremely ill-advised – quintessential dandy Gibbs lived in the building for “more than half [his] life.” Whilst also owning properties including Davington Priory in Kent – which he later sold to Bob Geldoff – and a “mystic hangover” home in Tangier, it was here that this ‘King’ of “distressed bohemian” style found a place that offered him: “Perfection for a singleton, an oasis of serenity in the frenetic heart of West London.”
This curious “cloistered world” has numbered Sir Isaiah Berlin, Alan Clark, Lord Byron, William Gladstone, J. B. Priestley, W. Somerset Maugham and Terence Stamp amongst those who have passed its vetting committee of trustees and Gibbs – a man who legendarily got Princess Margaret so high on marijuana that she had to go to hospital – even embraced its “no pets, no children, no whistling, no noise and absolutely no publicity” policy.
Antiques dealer Christopher Henry Gibbs, (29th July 1938 to 28th July 2018), son of The Hon. Sir Geoffrey Gibbs KCMG and Lady (Helen) Gibbs CBE, was called the ‘King of Chelsea’ due to his ability as the ultimate connector. He put the Rolling Stones together with Prince Rupert Loewenstein (whom became their business manager) and he persuaded his friend John Paul Getty, Jr. to donate £50 million to the British National Gallery in 1985.Christopher Gibbs by Robert Mapplethorpe and with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull.Christopher Gibbs pictured in his bathroom at L6 Albany, Albany Courtyard, Piccadilly, Mayfair, London, W1J 0AZ; the bathroom as it is today is in need of “some updating” according to agents GreenHunt.‘Set L6’ circa 2013, as furnished then by Christopher Gibbs.
Photographed there by the curmudgeonly Victor Watts on a daybed that allegedly belonged to Lord Tennyson, described the home he created in an article for The New York Times’ ‘Style Magazine’ in April 2013:
“I had the place to myself and proceeded to make it my own in the accustomed style: sober mahogany, Oriental rugs, family pictures. I’ve continually reordered these rooms, distilling, paring, pruning, as chaste as my voluptuous nature allows.”
“So enraptured with my Albany life did I become that, reason deserting me (not for the first or last time) I gave up a spacious Bond Street gallery where I had my antiques shop and took one at the back of Albany, a small if elegant space with an entrance into the building, another onto the street and best of all a door into the underground passage – a quiet, invisible stroll home.”
“I love returning from Morocco, where I now spend much of my time, seeing the friendly porters at the door, hearing the clip-clop of feet on the Rope Walk, seeing the old-timers sitting in the little ivy-lined garden, sunning themselves by the little bronze statue of Antinous and the fountain, regularly invaded by the ducks from St. James’s Park – and enjoying sudden glimpses into other people’s lives through uncurtained windows, the hours marked only by the clock chimes of St. James’s Church, accompanied by the more uptempo tinkling of the clock at Fortnum & Mason, our local grocers.”
“At this point, when I am in London, I can’t imagine staying anywhere but Albany – all the more reason, perhaps, to clam up, maintain the longstanding omertà (or I should say discretion) that has held sway for centuries now, and count my blessings.”
Gibbs’ former home, ‘Set L6,’ is situated on the second floor in Albany’s Courtyard. It extends to some 1,178 square foot and includes a hall, reception room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. On the third floor, a separately accessed studio space has a shower room and kitchenette and of the property, the selling agents remark: “Whilst capable of immediate occupation, [it] does require the bathrooms being upgraded.”
Sold for just £60,000 ($75,000, €69,000 or درهم275,000) leasehold in March 2019 (presumably the term must have been very much towards its end), agents GreenHunt listed ‘Set L6 Albany’ on Zoopla first in May that year. Now, in April 2020, it remains for sale, but is instead listed on Primelocation. They seek £925,000 ($1.2 million, €1.1 million or درهم4.2 million) and offer it on a new 20-year leasehold with an upfront premium and a peppercorn ground rent.
Living in the building is not just the preserve of those with deep pockets. Peviously, in 2014, we featured ‘Set A5 Attic Albany’ – which was just £395 per week ($494, €454 or درهم1,800 per week) – whilst for those looking for something grander currently, a second and third floor freehold set is currently available through Sotheby’s International Realty for £4.95 million ($6.19 million, €5.69 million or درهم22.73 million). It extends to 1,890 square feet, is described as “meticulously refurbished” and includes an especially impressive drawing room.
Christopher Gibbs quoted:
“[I’ve always attracted] the grand and the raffish and the fast and the chic.”
“[I am] monumentally narcissistic.”
“I am a bit snooty… I do make exceptions, but very few.”
“We are here to learn, and my goodness I have a lot to learn.”
“[I was expelled from Eton for] Rabelaisian antics – illicit drinking, pantry raids of other boys’ rooms – that sort of thing.”
“Taste is something you catch – like measles or religion.”
“I like things in their natural state – people especially. As life goes by, that’s what I admire: objects and people that are unmonkeyed with, that are themselves, not trying to be something else.”
“I’m not interested in creating a dazzling impression of richness. We can make do with surprisingly little in life. It is best to have a few things which are really nice. I don’t approve of the mean look, but I do approve of the spare look, where every little bit is telling.”
“Being a shopkeeper, I used to sell things, sometimes.”
“I definitely suffer from the blown-mind syndrome… The only thing I’ll say in my favour, is that I was practically the only person I knew who actually went to work at nine o’clock in the morning, whether I’d been up to eight o’clock or not, because I had a job, my own business, and I realised that, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have any of those things.”
“[I] help people make nice cosy homes where they are going to live happy, beautiful lives.”
“[I] encourage friends to dig into their heirlooms, to wear old clothes, to turn their backs on ugliness and conformism.”
“Collectors today want a good car, a good sound system, and a huge pink heart painted by Damien Hirst with dying butterflies on it which costs £400,000. Yet for much less you could buy something completely fascinating made 300 years ago.”
Quotes about Christopher Gibbs:
“Taste is difficult to define, but his is absolute perfection” – Min Hogg, founding editor of World of Interiors.
“[He was] like an 18th century English parson who knew more about Etruscan vases than anyone at the British Museum” – Sir John Richardson, July 2018.
“I’m here to learn how to be a gentleman” – Mick Jagger of his then neighbour Christopher Gibbs whilst at a dinner party at his house.
“He was very flash… Sometimes he just wore tight jeans or fancy dress, like the others; but mostly his tastes were elaborate; suits with double-breasted waistcoats and cloth-covered buttons, and velvet ties, and striped Turkish shirts with stiff white collars, and cravats. Above all, he had a passion for carnations and was forever buying new strains, pink-and-yellow, or green-ink, or purple with red flecks” – Nik Cohn, author of Today There Are No Gentlemen, January 1971.
“Part Montesquieu, part Beau Brummel, and part Baudelaire… [Christopher Gibbs was a] well-born Renaissance man with an unmatched eye for aesthetics and a talent for friendship and the mot juste” – Hamish Bowles, international editor at large for Vogue, July 2018.
“Christopher was almost single-handedly responsible for making English antiques, and English heritage, look ‘cool’ again” – James Reginato of Vanity Fair, July 2018.
“A connoisseur of the weird and the wonderful” – Christopher Mason of The New York Times, September 2000.
“[He was an] acid-tripping ex-roué once known as the King of Chelsea” – Bitter words from the ex-Daily Mail ‘journalist’ and poison pen James Delingpole, executive editor of Breitbart.
“[The] avatar of Swinging London” – A more kind description from Sam Roberts of The New York Times.
“Christopher Gibbs: the man who brokered £50 million Getty grant to the National Gallery – and fed Princess Margaret hash brownies” – Huon Mallalieu of The Art Newspaper, July 2018.
The entrance hallway of ‘Set L6’ has a fireplace.The master bedroom of ‘Looking into the reception room.The somewhat basic kitchen is definitely in need of an upgrade.The view from the set.Albany’s famous ‘Rope Walk’ – Of it, Gibbs commented: “So ingrained is the sense of decorum that even to utter a friendly hello to a neighbor as we pass on the stone stairs or the covered outdoor canopy, known as the Rope Walk, might be violating a taboo, as if a few words of small talk could break the spell of privacy we Albanians prize so deeply. (A nod suffices, a hat raised to a lady.)”Residents have access to the most peaceful outside spaces.The third floor space included in the sale is arranged as a long, thin studio room.It has a small kitchenette.And a somewhat dated shower room.A plan indicating how ‘Set L6’ is currently arranged.A plan of the third floor studio space.
Knightsbridge townhouse for sale for sum 11% lower than it sold for in 2011; it comes with a rather large hole in the garden that has been described as “almost as deep as the Führerbunker”
To the poet and wit Henry Luttrell (1765 – 1861) “eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets” was his idea of heaven. Now, a very wealthy buyer has the opportunity to acquire what some might consider the very opposite of such with the sale of his former home – complete with a 4-storey hole in its garden – in Knightsbridge.
Empty for many years and the subject of numerous critical articles about its dereliction in such titles as the Mirror and Daily Mail, Grade II listed 31 Brompton Square is on the market for £3 million less than it sold for in 2011. It was previously reportedly owned by the industrialist Lord Tanlaw and was also in the possession of the High Commission of Malaysia at some point.
Fraudster Achilleas Kallakis was undoubtedly the most controversial owner of the building
Philanthropists Dora and Mary de Beer (pictured with Esmond de Beer) were certainly more civilised residents
Baron Tanlaw of Tanlawhill reportedly owned the house for a period also
Aside from being home to the philanthropist sisters Dora and Mary de Beer (owners of the house between 1934 and 1981) and the Conservative Party politician the Hon. Michael Astor in addition, most controversially the property was bought by the now jailed businessman Achilleas Kallakis in the mid 2000s.
Kallakis – who in spite of demanding he be called ‘His Excellency’ and ‘The Don’ was actually simply “Britain’s biggest mortgage fraudster” – began work on a scheme to create what he termed a “pleasure palace” at 31 Brompton Square in 2005. He employed contractors to dig four levels down beneath what had been a pretty garden and commenced both authorised and unauthorised works to create what could still ultimately become a 22,000 square foot, 8-floor “trophy home.”
Construction stopped in 2008 after Kallakis’ arrest and in 2011, 31 Brompton Square was sold for £8 million more than sought to a Virgin Islands based company by receivers acting for Barclays Wealth. Said by locals to actually be owned at that time by a Dubai based businessman named Jonathan Hart, further planning schemes were submitted in October 2016 and now agents Savills seek £25 million for the unfinished building.
Of the sale, one near neighbour told The Steeple Times:
“This bastard of a basement has blighted this area of Knightsbridge for far too long.”
“We have feared subsidence might cause the hole to cave in since 2005 and now hope a new owner will rectify the mess left by the conman Kallakis. We simply want to be able to live out our years in peace and would like a nice, quiet family rather than a brash billionaire be the purchasers.”
September 2017 – For sale for £25 million ($33.9 million, €28.4 million or درهم125 million).
June 2016 – Predicted to be worth £50 million ($67.8 million, €56.9 million or درهم249 million) if iceberg extension were to be completed.
March 2011 – Sold for £28 million ($38 million, €31.9 million or درهم139.5 million) after a bidding war on an asking price of £20 million ($27.1 million, €22.7 million or درهم99.6 million).
An aerial view of the giant hole behind 31 Brompton Square
A closer view of the dormant site
The front elevation of 31 Brompton Square
A proposed floor plan for the building
A CGI image of a proposed design for a reception room within the existing building
A CGI image of a proposed design for a reception space in the proposed extension of the house
A CGI image of a proposed design for a reception space backing onto the garden
A CGI image of a proposed design for a swimming pool within the extension
854 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, New York, NY 10065, United States of America
Offering 20,000 square foot of accommodation over nine floors, 854 Fifth Avenue stands opposite Central Park and between 66th and 67th Streets. It was built in 1905 for a stockbroker named Robert Livingston Beeckman and constructed by architects Warren & Wetmore at a cost of $60,000 (the equivalent of $1.6 million, £1.2 million, €1.5 million or درهم5.9 million today). The residence was landmarked by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as a “superb example of the French classic style of Louis XV” in 1966 and to this day, the 32-room property retains original features including hand-carved balustrades of white marble, ceiling frescoes of angels and clouds, an original working stove and two of the city’s first private elevators.
Robert Livingston Beeckman (1866 – 1935), Emily Thorn Vanderbilt Sloane White (1852 – 1946) and Henry White (1850 – 1927)
Sold next to George Grant in 1912 after Beeckman – later 52nd Governor of Rhode Island – abandoned New York to spend more time at his Newport estate, Lands End, for a then record sum of $725,000 (the equivalent of $18.3 million, £14.1 million, €16.8 million or درهم67.2 million today), 854 Fifth Avenue was then offloaded to Henry White and his heiress wife Emily Thorn Vanderbilt Sloane White for the much lower sum of $450,000 in 1925 (the equivalent of $6.3 million, £4.9 million, €5.8 million or درهم23.1 million today).
Twice married financier of New York’s Sloane Hospital for Women Thorn Vanderbilt Sloane White and her ambassador husband are said to have “added their own touches” to the mansion and after she died, 854 Fifth Avenue was sold to the then nation of Yugoslavia. It has served as a government building since and was most recently used as the Permanent Mission of Serbia and Mission of Serbia to the UN.
Bombed on 11th July 1968 but thankfully subject to little damage in that attack, the mansion still to this day features a ‘Faraday Cage’ – a secret metal-padded room where officials could meet without the fear of being wiretapped – as well as bulletproof windows to its Central Park elevation.
Last week, of the property, Tristan Harper of Douglas Elliman told The Real Deal:
“Everything is virtually intact. Whoever buys it will own a piece of New York history. [The six individuals who have already expressed interest in purchasing 854 Fifth Avenue are] all extremely high-net-worth individuals of different backgrounds”.
Once bordered by houses of a similar scale, 854 Fifth Avenue is now adjoined by two behemoth-like apartment complexes. It stands sturdy and represents a little reminder of the glorious era of Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Whitneys.
Purpose-built Upper East Side, NYC Beaux Arts garage reduced in price by 41%; it will still cost around £40 million to buy and turn into a vast single family residence
Purpose built in 1906 to house the cars of wealthy (but not quite so wealthy enough to have their own carriage houses) Upper Eastsiders, 177 – 179 East 73rd Street in New York is a five-storey Beaux Arts structure that is described as “unusually sophisticated”.
Reduced from a completely unrealistic £39.8 million ($50 million, €47 million or درهم183.6 million) when first marketed in 2015 to £23.5 million ($29.5 million, €27.7 million or درهم108.4 million) today, estimates put the cost of converting the building to a single townhouse at upto £15.9 million ($20 million, €18.8 million or درهم73.5 million).
Featuring a granite and limestone façade, 177 – 179 East 73rd Street has ceiling heights that range from 12’7” to 17’, is 40’ wide and provides 17,232 square foot of internal space. Though plans have been drawn up to turn it into a vast 8-beroom residence complete with a 8-car garage, basketball court and home cinema, rival agent Jed Garfield of Leslie J. Garfield, told The Real Deal: “I think it’s still overpriced. The only surprising thing is that they’re now willing to sell it at [closer to] market price” late last week.
The building – which remains in use as a UES garage – is listed by Carrie Chiang of Corcoran and is described as “just waiting to undergo a metamorphosis in the hands of a discerning buyer”.
Image shows 177 – 179 East 73rd Street in 1906, 2017 and a rendering as a single family residence (left to right).
An opportunity to buy an American equivalent of Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey returns to our screens this autumn and one has to ask whether its writer Julian Fellowes was at all influenced by the story of the story of Peter Widener of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania whose son and grandson both died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic. (more…)
