David H. Murdock, the late billionaire businessman, made his fortune in real estate and corporate dealmaking, eventually becoming the owner of Dole Foods and Castle & Cooke. He died in 2025 at 102, after decades of building businesses and property holdings around the world.
For more than 40 years, he owned a duplex maisonette on Fifth Avenue, just across from Central Park. Murdock, who made his home in Southern California, bought the apartment in 1984 and mostly used it as a pied-à-terre when he was in New York for meetings with bankers, business associates, and lawyers. Now on the market for the first time since he bought it, the roughly 5,600-square-foot apartment has its own address at 811 Fifth Avenue, a private entrance from the avenue, another entrance inside the building, and windows facing north, south, east, and west.
RELATED: One of the Last Homes at the Flatiron Building Is Asking $15.3 Million
The living room room centers on a wood-burning fireplace.
Photography by Regan Wood
Murdock’s estate told the New York Times that the home’s elegant upholstered walls, thick carpets, and brass chandeliers are still in place, giving it a very different look from the ultra-modern Manhattan apartments that dominate the market today.
The apartment is laid out more like a townhouse than a standard Fifth Avenue apartment, with an entrance gallery, a library, and a formal dining room—each with a fireplace—on the ground floor, along with the kitchen and breakfast room with a built-in wine cooler. A 28-foot-long park-facing salon with another fireplace, as well as a music room, are on the upper floor along with all five of the en suite bedrooms.
The formal dining room has gold brocade wallcoverings and built-in china cabinets.
Photography by Regan Wood
There’s another fireplace in the primary suite, which also offers ample closet space, and a large en suite bathroom. The suite also doubled as Murdock’s private office, where representatives of his estate said he held many of his meetings and considered the room his “sanctuary.”
Murdock also used the apartment for entertaining, once hosting an Asia Society dinner where food was served on his 18th-century tobacco-leaf dinner service, according to his estate.
RELATED: This $18.5 Million Apartment in Lower Manhattan Was Once F.W. Woolworth’s Office
The primary suite faces Central Park.
Photography by Regan Wood
The maisonette is part of a 13-story co-op at 810 Fifth Avenue designed by architect James E.R. Carpenter and completed in 1926. The Renaissance Palazzo-style building was designed with unusually large apartments, and its past residents include William Randolph Hearst, David Geffen, and Charles Bronfman. Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller lived there too during the 1968 presidential campaign.
The apartment hasn’t had a major renovation in some time, according to the listing agents, so there’s plenty for a new owner to tackle. The maisonette is asking approximately $15 million, with Compass brokers Tom Postilio and Mickey Conlon handling the listing.
Click here to see more photos of the Fifth Avenue maisonette.
Photography by Regan Wood
Source: Luxury - robbreport.com
