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    Rupert Murdoch Takes a $20 Million Loss on His New York City Penthouse

    After a dizzying two years on and off the market and numerous price chops, Rupert Murdoch has finally sold his penthouse in New York’s Flatiron District to an as-yet-unidentified buyer for a speck under $24 million. The Fox News and News Corp owner bought the triplex at the One Madison tower in 2014 for a whopping $43 million, which means he took a stunning $20 million loss on the property, not counting carrying costs, improvement expenses and real estate fees. The nonagenarian billionaire originally aimed for a much higher (and profitable) sum when he first listed the apartment in 2022 for $62 million. Alas, failing to find an interested party at that sky-high price, the media magnate’s mansion in the sky received several price chops. It was last discounted in June to its final ask of $28.5 million.

    The reason for the reductions was to keep the residence in line with comparable values in the area, Kyle Blackmon, the head of luxury sales at Compass, who represented the property, told Crain’s New York Business over the summer. “My client is a realist, and he is very astute about how markets function,” Blackmon explained to the newspaper.

    Rupert Murdoch’s triplex penthouse at One Madison in New York City just sold for $23.8 million.

    Anton Brookes | H5 property

    RELATED: A Gold Dome Caps This $25 Million Manhattan Penthouse Being Sold for Charity

    The condo occupies the 58th, 59th, and 60th floors of the bronze and glass skyscraper and has been renovated during Murdoch’s decade-long residence. Altogether, the three-level spread comprises six bedrooms and six and a half bathrooms across its 7,143 square feet and is decked out with double-height, floor-to-ceiling windows that offer up panoramic views of the Empire State Building, along with the gold dome that caps the New York Edition hotel. And, for those with no fear of heights, a slender terrace wraps around the great room.

    The great room has floor-to-ceiling windows with 360-degree city views.

    Anton Brookes | H5 property

    The lower floor holds an eat-in chef’s kitchen, a dining room, and a cozy library. There’s an option of taking the private internal elevator or sculptural, circular staircase to the middle level, which holds two guest bedrooms with private baths, plus a staff suite. There are two more en suite guest bedroom and a primary suite complete with an ensuite bath and large dressing room on the top floor.

    The apartment overlooks the Empire State building and 23 East 22nd Street.

    Anton Brookes | H5 property

    As it turns out, Murdoch hasn’t had much luck at One Madison: he sold another condo situated directly below the triplex back in October 2022 for $12.5 million, about $1.5 million less than the $14 million he paid when he snapped it up in 2014.

    The Australian-born tycoon and his new bride—he was married for the fifth time earlier this year to retired Russian molecular biologist Elena Zhukova—isn’t saying goodbye to New York City altogether as he remains the owner of a 6,500-square-foot, full-floor apartment at Hampshire House on Central Park South, which he picked up last year for $35.2 million, a whopping $5.2 million over the asking price.

    Authors

    Abby Montanez

    Abigail Montanez is a staff writer at Robb Report. She has worked in both print and digital publishing for over half a decade, covering everything from real estate, entertainment, dining, travel to…

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    Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Manhattan Pied-à-Terre Can Be Yours for $10 Million

    One of Hollywood’s most successful and enduring couples, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, long made their home on a 6.8-acre spread in Westport, Connecticut. For decades, they also maintained a penthouse pied-à-terre that Woodward, sixteen years after Newman’s death, has just hoisted onto the market for $9.95 million. Maintenance charges tally up to more than $13,000 per month, according to listings held by Noble Black and Jennifer Stillman of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

    According to The New York Times, the couple acquired the penthouse in the early 1980s and used it for weeks-long stays in the city and for entertaining prominent, high-powered friends such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Tom Cruise, Cher, and Harry Belafonte. The sale is being handled by the couple’s children on behalf of Woodward, who largely retreated from public life after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007. Carefully maintained but not updated much in recent years, the top-floor spread retains original prewar features like nearly 11-foot ceilings, herringbone wood floors, a wood-burning fireplace, and decorative wood moldings and built-ins.

    RELATED: This $20 Million Manhattan Penthouse Is Perched Atop the Tallest Residential Tower on Fifth Avenue

    Newman was a skilled jazz and blues pianist who kept a grand piano in the living room.

    Evan Joseph Studios

    The apartment is one of two penthouses atop a handsome, J.E.R. Carpenter-designed limestone-clad building, which was completed in 1925 and stands at the corner of East 93rd Street and Fifth Avenue across from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. One of the more distinguished cooperative apartment houses on Fifth Avenue, other notable residents over the years include another entertainment industry couple who have been married for decades, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, and James Gorman, the former CEO of Morgan Stanley, who will become chairman of The Walt Disney Company next year.

    Essentially set up as a one-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms and a powder room, the penthouse pad spans about 3,000 square feet. Two terraces add another 2,300 square feet of space, one east-facing with sweeping sunrise views over Central Park and the other with north, west and south city and sunset views. 

    Newman, a racecar driver as well as a skilled pianist, once kept a grand piano in the 36-foot-long living room that has a fireplace at one end and a hidden walk-in dry bar at the other. The adjacent dining room has a wall of built-in shelves, while the kitchen is functional if quite dated with tile that dates to the 1980s. The service areas around the kitchen include a butler’s pantry, a breakfast room with terrace access and a spacious laundry room.

    The dining room features original wood moldings and built-ins.

    Evan Joseph Studios

    RELATED: The 25 Most Expensive Homes in the World for Sale

    Off the foyer is a study that can be used as a second bedroom, while the spacious primary suite is a combination of two smaller bedrooms. There are two walk-in closets, a tiled bathroom and access to a huge wrap-around terrace. Woodward owns a separate two-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, which was used as an office, gym and guest space, and is reported to be available for purchase separately. 

    Newman and Woodward are show business legends with storied careers and long lists of accolades. Between them they received 15 Academy Award nominations. Woodward took home a best actress award for the 1957 film The Three Faces of Eve, while Newman won his best actor trophy for Martin Scorsese’s 1986 movie “The Color of Money” and was also honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1994.

    Click here for more photos of the Fifth Avenue apartment.

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    ‘Masters of Sex’ Star Lizzy Caplan Lists Her Hollywood Hills Home for $2.85 Million

    About four years before Lizzy Caplan married English stage and screen actor Tom Riley (and not too long after she split up with late actor Matthew Perry), the veteran film and television actress plunked down a tad more than $1.8 million for a circa 1961 modernist home in Los Angeles that nearly a dozen years later has popped up for sale with a $2.85 million price tag. Patricia Ruben of Sotheby’s International Realty—Los Feliz Brokerage holds the listing.

    Alternatively, the 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath Hollywood Hills home, on a quiet street above Bronson Canyon in the Los Feliz Oaks neighborhood, is also available for rent at $15,000 per month, down from the original ask of $17,500 per month.

    The kitchen’s emerald-green cabinets contrast with the wood ceiling and butcher block island.

    Jo David for Sotheby’s International Realty

    Beyond the gated courtyard entry and through the front doors, an atrium is bursting with lush greenery. Pale wood floors flow into the living room, anchored by a whitewashed raised hearth brick fireplace. Glass sliders open the room to the backyard, and clerestory windows bring tons of light into the fashionably eclectic space. A cozy adjoining sitting area is decked out with a curvaceous built-in sofa alongside built-in bookshelves. 

    The nearby kitchen, fitted with chef-grade appliances, emerald-green laminate cabinets and a rustic butcher block island set below two Moroccan lanterns, is open to a relaxed dining area that spills out to the backyard through more sliding glass doors.

    One of the guest bedrooms is outfitted as a den with a built-in entertainment center, and the other, painted a deep shade of blue, has a contrasting wall of white oak wardrobes, while the primary bedroom is a calm oasis with a view into the atrium. The attached bathroom includes a wet area swaddled in blue tiles with an indoor-outdoor shower space.

    The pool is shielded from neighboring homes by mature plantings.

    Jo David for Sotheby’s International Realty

    Tall trees and lush greenery ensure the backyard is private enough to skinny-dip with complete confidence the neighbors can’t see. Concrete terracing surrounds the pill-shaped pool, while a decked lounge area pushes out over the hillside with cushioned seating, retractable sunshades, and, if you sit in just the right spot, a peek-a-boo view of the Hollywood Sign.

    Caplan’s early roles included several episodes of the cult fave TV series Freaks and Geeks and outcast Janis Ian in the 2004 comedy movie Mean Girls. More recently she portrayed Alex Forrest in the TV version of the 1987 film Fatal Attraction, and she’ll next be seen on the silver screen in the third installment of the Now You See Me heist film franchise.

    Click here for more photos of the Hollywood Hills home.

    Jo David for Sotheby’s International Realty More

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    Private Island In France With Historic Chateau (PHOTOS)

    Listed with Peter Bos of Bretagne Nord Sotheby’s International Realty LOCATION: Trégastel, France SQUARE FOOTAGE: 3,229 BEDROOMS & BATHROOMS: 5 bedrooms & 7 bathrooms PRICE: €9,500,000 This private island is located in Trégastel, France. Dubbed “Château de Costaérès”, the historic home was built in 1895 by the Lithuanian-Polish mathematician, engineer and inventor Bruno Abdank-Abakanowicz. It features […] More

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    This Revamped $11 Million L.A. Home Dates Back to Hollywood’s Golden Age

    Throughout their lengthy lives together, Golden-Age Hollywood couple Stanley Rubin and Kathleen Hughes racked up many accomplishments between them—he as a prolific film/TV writer and producer who helped run the Writers and Producers guilds and garnered one of the first Emmys ever awarded, and she as an actress who’s probably best known for her turns in the cult film It Came from Outer Space and as Henry Blake’s wife Lorraine in M*A*S*H.

    Rubin passed away back in 2014 at age 96, and early last year, Hughes sold their longtime marital home in the coveted Bird Streets area of Los Angeles for nearly $5 million. Now their longtime Hollywood Hills property high above the Sunset Strip has once again popped up for sale after a thorough remodel with a $6 million jump in price, asking a speck under $11 million. The listing is held by Weston Littlefield and Alex Howe of Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California.

    Completely rebuilt down to the studs, the home features sleek custom-poured terrazzo floors and a newly designed kitchen.

    Matthew Momberger

    RELATED: An Early A. Quincy Jones Home in L.A. Is Up for Grabs at $1.85 Million

    Originally designed and built for the couple in the late 1950s by lesser-known architect Richard Frazer, the midcentury-modern home is tucked away at the end of a secluded cul-de-sac street, amid a half-acre parcel of land carved into the hillside. Inside, four bedrooms and an equal number of baths can be found in almost 3,500 square feet of single-level living space that’s been meticulously remodeled by its current owner, Philippe Naouri of the preservation-minded development firm Maison d’Artiste.

    A walkway passes through a sculpture-clad entryway before emptying out at bright orange double doors. Once inside, stylish interiors boasting custom-poured terrazzo floors are highlighted by a spacious living area anchored by a massive stone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors spilling out to a slender covered patio. An adjacent dining area connects to the streamlined kitchen, which has a center island equipped with a sink and a cooktop, plus ebony-hued appliances encased within a wood-paneled wall.

    The cactus-laced backyard is centered around a pool and spa overlooking panoramic city views.

    Matthew Momberger

    Holding court on the other side of the living room fireplace is an office space with built-in shelving, and elsewhere is a glass-lined primary suite that has a walk-in closet, as well as a spa-like bath sporting dual vanities, an open two-person shower, and access to an outdoor shower. Also available on the desert-inspired grounds, which overlook unobstructed city and canyon views, are a freeform pool, a raised spa, a Baja shelf-like water feature, and a fire pit conversation area; and out front is a gated motor court flanked by carport parking for two vehicles.

    Click here for more photos of the Hollywood Hills residence.

    Matthew Momberger More

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    Cartoonist Charles Schulz’s Former Home in Northern California Can Be Yours for $3.2 Million

    Over two decades after his death at age 77, a chunk of Charles M. Schulz’s onetime Northern California estate is newly available. The legendary cartoonist, best known for creating the iconic Peanuts comic strip, acquired a bucolic 28-acre property in the Sonoma County town of Sebastopol in the early 1960s at the height of his career. He then custom-built a residence that came to be known as Coffee Grounds, for its locale on Coffee Lane. The part of the estate where Schulz’s studio stood on the since-subdivided property was sold last year for nearly $4 million, and now the custom-built main home on an adjacent parcel is up for grabs at a dash under $3.3 million.

    Occupied by Schulz and his family from the mid-1960s until the early ’70s, following their move from Minnesota to California, the midcentury-modern home was last sold in 1985 to the late artist Jack Stuppin and his wife Diane and subsequently underwent extensive renovations. Originally designed by local architecture firm Steele & Van Dyk, the redwood, Douglas fir, and lava stone structure features a total of six bedrooms and seven baths in a little more than 6,800 square feet of living space that still retains a retro Jack-and-Jill bath sporting a vintage hair-washing sink from Schulz’s tenure.

    The open-plan interiors contain a sunken living area alongside a dining area with a piano.

    Charlie Young for Sotheby’s International Realty

    RELATED: Jack London Penned Novels at This Idyllic Wine Country Estate. Now It Can Be Yours for $5 Million.

    Tucked away on over nine acres of land surrounded by mature trees and vineyards, about 15 minutes west of Santa Rosa, the split-level residence is highlighted by a fireside living room that steps up to a combination entertaining and dining area that has sliding glass doors opening to an expansive deck. An adjacent kitchen is outfitted with an eat-in island topped with ceramic tile and a breakfast nook.

    Elsewhere is a primary suite displaying a massive double-sided white brick fireplace that connects to a lounge area with access to a private deck, as well as a walk-in closet and a bath sporting dual vanities, a soaking tub, and a glass-encased shower. There’s also an office space, along with a lower level that currently houses a game room and a wine cellar.

    A flagstone sundeck surrounds the swimming pool, which is set against dense greenery.

    Charlie Young for Sotheby’s International Realty

    RELATED: A Famed Travel Writer Lists His Remote Island Retreat in Maine for $1.3 Million

    Outdoors, the picturesque grounds are laced with gardens and host a swimming pool encased within a flagstone sundeck. Elsewhere are a seasonal pond, pastures, and sculptures of Snoopy and Woodstock created in Shulz’s honor. Rounding it all out is a separate guesthouse, plus an attached two-car garage and a carport that can accommodate up to four vehicles.

    The listing is held by Maria Marchetti and Sonya Hollander of Sotheby’s International Realty.

    Click here for more photos of the Sonoma County home.

    Charlie Young for Sotheby’s International Realty More

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    Legendary Designer Dorothy Draper’s Childhood Home in New York Just Listed for $4 Million

    Fans of the late design legend Dorothy Draper now have the chance to buy the elegant home where she grew up. The interior decorator’s parents, Paul and Susan Tuckerman, built the property in Tuxedo Park, New York, back in 1883. At the time, the couple were among the just two dozen patrician families that Pierre Lorillard IV, the founder of Tuxedo Park, invited to join the exclusive gated community. The Tuckermans erected five residences here throughout the years, including a red brick mansion where they lived with their two children—Draper and her brother, Roger. Now, for the first time in nearly 30 years, 82 Lookout Road is up for grabs, asking a speck under $4 million.

    Dubbed Ogden Lodge, the stately spread was originally built by Gilded Age architect James Brown Lord and was home to Draper from when she was three years old until she was 10. Not only did the digs influence her signature style, but they led to the founding of her eponymous firm in 1925. Draper was renowned for her maximalist aesthetic and use of unconventional color combinations, as well as high-profile projects, like the Palácio Quitandinha in Rio de Janeiro and West Virginia’s Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs. 

    The intricate plaster ceiling was sourced from a country house in Wales.

    Brett Willis

    Public records show that the dwelling was snapped up in 1996 for a cool $1.5 million. According to the listing, the current owner, also an interior designer, restored the place in 2021. Altogether, the palatial pad sits on just shy of 1.5 acres and holds nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms across its 8,195 square feet. “This extraordinary estate offers a unique blend of historic charm and modern luxury,” notes the listing, which is being represented by Laura Denberg of Tuxedo Hudson Realty.

    During the renovation, the sellers collaborated with preservation experts to restore and recreate the home’s original architectural details, including the plaster walls and wood floors. For example, the new Welsh black slate roof is meant to resemble the original. Plus, decorative pieces of terracotta and any brickwork were reproduced to match the existing exterior. There were also repairs made to the glass awning and steel casement windows. While not necessarily authentic, new plumbing, electricity, insulation, and appliances bring the structure into the 21st century. 

    The primary suite’s mint green walls reflect Draper’s signature use of pastel colors.

    Brett Willis

    Additional highlights include a chef’s kitchen with a walk-in pantry, a library with a carved soapstone fireplace and bar, a formal dining room, and a sunroom. Admittedly, the current vibes of Ogden House might be a bit pared back for Draper’s signature Modern Baroque style, but it’s where her enduring legacy began.

    Click here to see more photos of the Tuxedo Park home.

    Brett Willis

    Authors

    Abby Montanez

    Abigail Montanez is a staff writer at Robb Report. She has worked in both print and digital publishing for over half a decade, covering everything from real estate, entertainment, dining, travel to…

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