The Ellen Biddle Shipman house, the huge, elegant, century-old mansion that put Beekman Place on the map as a fashionable destination for wealthy city-dwellers, has found a buyer willing to pay $35 million, the Observer reports. The closing price, although it's a good 28 percent less than the $48.5 million that the house was originally asking, still set a city record for 20-foot-wide townhouses at $4,844 per square foot. (The previous record belonged to 14 East 94th Street, which sold in December, somewhat inexplicably, for $4,380 per square foot.)
The house, which Shipman, one of the most prominent landscape architects of her time, renovated over the course of seven years, went through an ignominious period in the early 2000s when it was owned by a Floridian businessman named William R. Rupp. Rupp's additions included monogrammed gates and a "spite wall" to block his neighbors' views of the East River. But the house's most recent owner, Peter Novello, who bought it from Rupp in 2008 for $10.6 million, gave it a renovation that thoroughly restored the mansion to its former glory, and did such a good job that the person or persons who just bought the place also bought all the furniture. (The breakdown: $34.35 million for the house and $650,000 for the furnishings.)
· Ellen Biddle Shipman's Beekman Place Townhouse House Fetches $35 M. [Observer]
· Ellen Biddle Shipman House Seeks $48.5 Million [Curbed]
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