Meet the city’s latest trophy apartment — a penthouse at the iconic Woolworth Building that is back on the market for an eye-popping $110 million.
“This is as close to having a castle in New York City as you can get,” developer Ken Horn tells the Post.
The 9,710-square-foot apartment, which features 24-foot ceilings and a private elevator, spans five floors and comes with its own private open air observatory that is 727 feet above the city.
It first went on the market in 2014, but no buyers emerged.
“It was last on the market a few years ago at the same price,” top broker Dolly Lenz told The Post. “It’s a spectacular building, with a great renovation and a fabulous penthouse. While it is bullish on its price, it will find its level.”
The steel and terra cotta structure, built in neo-Gothic style, is a national historic landmark. It was created by architect Cass Gilbert. When it was completed in 1913, it was the world’s tallest building.
Horn, of Alchemy Properties, is marketing 33 residences and declined to tell the Post how many have sold so far. He has tapped Thierry Despont, known for transforming landmarks like the Ritz Paris, and working for top clients like Bill Gates and Calvin Klein. Working with the city’s landmarks preservation commission, Despont elongated the penthouse’s windows and added new ones — 125 in all.
Building amenities include a health club and spa with a pool, sauna and a hot tub, a wine cellar, a tasting room — and personal mail delivery.
Steve Witkoff and Ruby Schron bought the building in 1998 for $146 million and still own its lower floors.
In 2012, Alchemy bought the top 30 floors for $68 million from Witkoff and Schron’s Cammeby’s International. It then borrowed $220 million from Overseas Bank Ltd. to finance its residential conversion.
“This is one of the five most iconic buildings in the world,” Horn said. “One can always build new penthouses in glass skyscrapers, but it is impossible to replicate this anywhere. No one builds terra cotta anymore. It’s too expensive. When you go up there, you feel like you are at the top of the world. You are buying something that can never exist anywhere else in the world.”
It’s a bold listing, according to real estate experts, considering that most trophy apartments sold in the city have done so after price slashes of tens of millions of dollars.
So far, only one condo — at 157 W. 57th St., known as One57, the “billionaire’s building” — has sold for more than $100 million. The Woolworth Building was once the city’s tallest building and One57 was briefly the city’s tallest residential building.
To date, the most expensive downtown purchase was a $50.9 million trade at Walker Tower in Chelsea. But that 2013 purchase was made with dirty money linked to the multibillion-dollar Malaysian money-laundering scandal and the feds are trying to seize it.
Billionaire Steve Cohen first tried to sell his apartment at 141 E. 58th St. for $115 million in 2013. This month, that penthouse duplex went back on the market for $57.5 million.
“Units trade when their prices are reduced,” said Cohen’s broker, Tal Alexander of Douglas Elliman, who is listing the Cohen property with his brother, Oren Alexander.
Another trophy apartment that can’t sell is Tommy Hilfiger’s penthouse at the Plaza Hotel, which comes with its own turret and original Eloise mural.
Hilfiger bought the unit for $25.5 million 2008 and tried to flip it that year for $50 million but could not find a buyer.
By 2013, he upped the price to $80 million — but again got no buyers. This month, he put it back on the market for $50 million and, he told The Post, he is still confident he’ll find a buyer.
“There’s only one Plaza — and only one duplex penthouse like this, with the dome and the terrace overlooking the park and Fifth Avenue,” he said.
Here’s a list of some trophies that have traded at drastically slashed prices:
- A massive triplex penthouse at the Pierre hotel that went on the market for $125 million recently sold for the steeply discounted price of $44 million. The buyer was Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and his wife, Allison. The seller was Barbara Zweig, widow of financier Martin Zweig.
- It also took four years for British developer Christian Candy to find a buyer for his Plaza Hotel penthouse. He first listed it for $59 million in 2013. But it wasn’t until he knocked $20 million off the asking price that he finally found a buyer. It went into contract last June, when the residence was last asking $39.7 million.
- Demi Moore also learned that she’d have to do a “G.I. Jane” move and knock $30 million off the price of her fancy penthouse triplex at the posh San Remo on Central Park West if she wanted to find a buyer. She started off asking $75 million for her pricey pad in 2015. It sold in April for $45 million.