Frank Lloyd Wright's Old Plaza Suite Now Wants $39.5M

Five years ago, the Frank Lloyd Wright suite in the Plaza sold for $13 million—a 40 percent loss for the sellers—and now, the owners of the apartment think that they can sell the four-bedroom spread for a whopping $39.5 million. The reason for the 200 percent price hike? A gut renovation by Louis Lisboa of VL Architects and interior designer Susanna Maggard. The final product got the Architectural Digest treatment last November, and the magazine details the major changes that were made. The team shrunk the master bedroom, expanded the living room on both ends, and created three additional bedrooms. All of the mechanical systems were reworked, which allowed the ceiling heights to be increased by six inches.

The owners, Lisa and James Cohen (he is the chairman of Hudson Media, while she is an editor at DuJour magazine), bought the place to use as a pied-a-terre, and while the FLW connection was certainly appealing—the famed architect lived here from 1954 to 1959 while overseeing the construction of the Guggenheim Museum—the couple also got married at the Plaza. The brokerbabble for the apartment is light on details, but thankfully Architectural Digest is not.

The architect created "customized moldings and other details, among them a set of pocket doors—painted to imitate Macassar ebony—between the living room and entrance hall." The den has " a coconut-shell-veneer cocktail table from the 1970s sits beside a pair of '30s Spanish modern armchairs." And "the home's spirit of comfortable elegance" is best captured in the "lavender master bedroom, with its Murano-glass chandelier, striped canopy bed, and mirrored side tables." And that art you see? Oh, just the work of Willem de Kooning, Jean Dubuffet, George Condo, and Mark Grotjahn, to name a few.

When the man himself lived there, he filled it with custom furniture. Now that would be worth a hefty price tag.

· Frank Lloyd Wright's Plaza home on market for $39.5M [NYP]
· A Luxurious Manhattan Apartment in the Plaza [AD]
· Listing: The Plaza, #409 [Corcoran via StreetEasy]