They’re Not Looking Forward To A Bunch Of Gawkers At The Open House

The penthouse of the Pierre Hotel is for sale for $70 million, just the latest in an endless string of broken records:

By October of [1930], the Pierre’s top two floors, including the exposed wooden platform on which the debs braved the elements, would be transformed into a glamorous breakfast room and night club, “decorated to resemble the interior of a zeppelin cabin,” according to The New York Sun. Not long after that, the hotel would begin to operate the space as a ballroom.

A place of Champagne bubbles and swing bands, the Pierre Roof, as it became known, was the exclusive province of high society in Depression-era New York. Though its interior was off-limits to most of the city, however, its ornate exterior became a signature feature of the Fifth Avenue skyline. Set atop a slender tower of cream-colored brick, the Pierre’s upper floors had the rarefied aspect of a French chateau in the sky, complete with a gleaming copper mansard roof 500 feet above 61st Street.

The New Yorker hailed the new hotel as a “millionaires’ Elysium,” and the description still applies. The space once occupied by that rooftop restaurant is now a private penthouse triplex on the market for a cool $70 million, which brokers say is the highest price ever listed for a New York residence.

The primary selling point is the 3,500-square-foot grand salon, the former ballroom of the Pierre Roof. Occupying most of the 42nd floor, the room is bordered by 20-foot-high Palladian windows and topped by a curved 23-foot ceiling. On each of the room’s two west-facing corners, soaring French doors open onto terraces offering breathtaking views of Central Park and beyond. The master bedroom suite has two additional corner terraces.

The financial guru Martin Zweig, author of “Winning on Wall Street,” bought the apartment in 1999 for $21.5 million, then a record. He is now trying to sell it because he and his wife, Barbara, live in Miami and spend only a month or two a year in New York. If the triplex sells for anything close to its asking price this time, it will again smash the record for the biggest single residential deal in city history, topping the Harkness mansion on East 75th Street, which was sold in October for $53 million.

. . .

“When they walk into the ballroom, their mouths just fall wide open,” said Elizabeth Lee Sample, the Brown Harris Stevens broker who, with her colleague Brenda Powers, holds the exclusive listing for the triplex.

The wallet of the eventual buyer will also have to fall wide open. The Pierre cooperative requires that apartments be bought entirely in cash. By comparison with the asking price, the annual maintenance fee of $464,600 seems almost modest, particularly since the services of a uniformed housekeeper and houseman are included.

Two would-be buyers have made $70 million offers since the 16-room, 5-fireplace triplex went on the market in October 2004, Ms. Sample said. “But it doesn’t mean anything,” she added, “until we get them through the board.”

Damn co-op boards.