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The Listerine heiress and philanthropist Rachel “Bunny” Mellon and her husband, Paul, owned many extravagant homes throughout the U.S., including an elegant mansion on East 70th Street (eventually purchased for $37 million by a Netscape co-founder) and a farm, known as Oak Spring, in Virginia.
But after she died in 2014 (Paul preceded her in 1999), her estate began selling off those properties—and this Essex House condo, asking $8.9 million, is one of the last of the bunch.
Compared to that 70th Street townhouse, the three-bedroom condo doesn’t look like much—it doesn’t have a garden with a reflecting pool, for instance—and indeed, Mellon used it “primarily for business,” according to The New York Times. But it’s still a nice place, with the expansive views of Central Park that you’d expect from an apartment on the 28th floor of Essex House.
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Still, while it is “both lavish and understated, consciously so,” per the Times, “signifiers of class hide in plain sight.” The walls were painted white, but five separate shades of it; antiques that Mellon owned can be found throughout. She also widened the windows that overlook Central Park, the better to maximize those gorgeous views.
Mellon purchased two adjoining apartments for $5.9 million in 2000, and combined them to create this particular unit, which measures 2,100 square feet.
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