Bob Weinstein Lists and Lowers

SELLER: Bob Weinstein
LOCATION: Central Park West, New York, NY
PRICE: $29,750,000
SIZE: 6,500 square feet (approximately), 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: ...A grand stairway leads to six large bedrooms, seven and one-half bathrooms, a paneled library, huge family room, formal dining room, superb kitchen, laundry room, two terraces, three fireplaces and four exposures. The numerous custom details include three zoned air conditioning and Crestron system for sound and lighting...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After all the mishegoss yesterday afternoon about Shorty and Mousey Cruise snatching up a townhouse in the West Village, Your Mama is in a New York state of mind so we're going to piggy back on real estate gossip Max Abeleson's recent report regarding movie producer Bob Weinstein listing his big digs at the fabled, fabulous, tri-towered and tri-lobbied Beresford building that architect Emory Roth designed in 1929 to lord over the high-priced corner of Central Park West and West 81st Street.

Some of the children will recall that just a couple of short weeks ago young Mister Abelson snitched that Bob Weinstein quietly heaved his 14 room doo-plex on the market with an asking price of $34,000,000. Apparently there were no deep pocketed buyers at that figure because yesterday Mister Weintstein's Upper West Side sprawler hit the open market with a significantly lower but still blistering asking price of $29,750,000.

Records and reports reveal Mister Weinstein–whose company is much rumored be in a financial freefall–purchased the (approximately) 6,500 square foot doo-plex in September of 2004 for a flat $20,000,000. Although the bulk of the apartment (and both of the terraces) sits on the upper level, the main living areas are on the lower level. There are beautifully done herringbone wood floors throughout the main floor which includes a long foyer with a gently curving stair case, a "coat room" as large as some studio apartments, a living room with fireplace and an adjacent library where the guest pooper and wet bar are located. Behind the foyer is a large playroom and terlit for the kiddies and a barely decorated dining room sits between the foyer and the vaguely Euro-Parisian style eat in kitchen with white cabinets and what appears to be Delft tile crawling up all the walls. A back stair case tucked behind the stove leads to a large laundry room and staff bedroom which not only has its own pooper but will actually accommodate a full sized mattress.

Upstairs a second, book shelf lined library (that's right children, a second library) includes a fireplace and gives access to the smaller of the doo-plex's two terraces. Three large family bedrooms all feature private poopers and a fourth somewhat smaller bedroom/office appears to be lined with book shelves. A well positioned half bathroom in the hallway means not having to trek through a bedroom when nature makes its inevitable call while being psychically and dee-lishusly brutalized by re-runs of The Real Housewives of New Jersey in the upstairs library.

The master suite is entered through an entrance gallery that directs traffic into the vast bedroom or into the master bath. The bedroom stretches nearly 30 feet long with a third fireplace and provides access to the larger of the two terraces. It's a bit of a shame that the doo-plex's largest terrace is only accessible through the master bedroom because who wants to pay twenty or thirty million clams for an apartment only to have to drag guests through the master bedroom when they come over to sip gin and tonics and watch the sun set over New Jersey? The children will also not that the floor plan does not indicate a terlit (or bee-day) in the master bathroom, however we can all be assured that that important apparatus was only forgotten on the floor plan and not in real life. Between the bedroom and bathroom is a large dressing room with built in cabinetry and two happy marriage making walk in closets. One of Your Mama's many unrequested recommendations for a drama-free household is to not share closet space with your spouse. Everyone needs a little private space of their own.

Other notable features include the large pantry off the upstairs laundry room, the three zone air conditioning and the Crestron system that controls lighting and audio. The main drawback, and it's a biggie for an apartment of this cost, is that the unit faces primarily south...good for the light but not so good for views of Central Park which can only be seen obliquely and over the roof top of the Museum of Natural History. Don't misunderstand Your Mama, the view is still quite spectacular, but is it thirty million dollars magnificent? We'll let you and prospective buyers be the judge of that. A second bugaboo is the $10,076 per month maintenance charges which might be pocket change to Richie Rich types, but it's still a lot of dough to cough up each month in addition to whatever mortgage might be obtained.

Even after selling his doo-plex at the Beresford, Mister Weinstein will still be rich with residential real estate. Property records and previous reports indicate that in May of 2009 Mister and Missus Weinstein paid $15,000,000 for a 4-floor townhouse on West 70th Street, in April of 2008 he forked over $1,050,000 for a ground floor one bedroom hideaway on West 67th Street and in January of 2005 he plunked down three million clams for a 2,914 square foot downtown spread in the very same Astor Place building where Mister Max Abelson's baby-faced boss-manJared Kushner–who is, incidentally, afianced to Ivanka Trump–recently scooped up a $3,225,000 crib.

Other famous shareholders at the Beresford include the not so funny anymore Jerry Seinfeld and his baby factory wifey Jessica, former foot-in-her-mouth Cosmopolitan queen bee Helen Gurley Brown, volatile tennis ace John McEnroe, fancy furrier Dennis Basso, wildly rich Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, legendary film director Sidney Lumet, mustachioed exposé journalist John Stossel and Academy Award winning actress Glenn Close who in May of 2005 paid $6,025,000 for a two-bedroom, two-terraced penthouse apartment that once belonged to closeted movie stud Rock Hudson.

UPDATE: Tom Cruise

If the children will put on their thinking caps and go back to May 28, 2009, they will recall that Your Mama passed on a bit of rumor and gossip that we received from Famous Freddie about Tinseltown-based actor Tom Cruise and his baby maker Katie Holmes buying a six story townhouse on West 12th Street in Manhattan's West Village neighborhood (pictured above).

Well puppies, it seems Your Mama opened a can of worms because now, three weeks later, the rumors are piling up like cars at the junkyard with new reports on Curbed, Gawker, and in the Village Voice who actually sent a reporter around to dish with a few of the all-knowing doormen on the bizzy but beautiful block.

Although two Cruise family mouthpieces adamantly deny there is any correctness to the canard, one chatty doorman on the block told the nosey peeps at the Village Voice that the new owner–whom he refused to name and whom records reveal paid $15,075,000 for the 8,113 square foot townhouse in April of 2009–will not be around much because he'll be filming in Los Angeles and that the new owner bought the house for his wifey who was recently in a Broadway show. Sure sounds like Shorty and Mousey Cruise to Your Mama* but until Famous Freddie rings Your Mama hollering about how he just spied the first family of Scientology sitting on the stoop sweating out a hot summer night like real New Yorkers then it's just real estate scuttlebutt.

Since Shorty Cruise's crib in the American Felt building on East 13th Street is barely big enough to fit his over-sized ego, it makes sense that he the The Mouse would want and need bigger digs to accommodate them, their trio of Scientolochildren and their retinue of minders, handlers, family members, body guards and ass kissers.

*New York Magazine fairly (and rather cleverly) sussed out that other buyers could include Julia Roberts and Danny Moder, not yet married Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy and Neil Patrick Haris and David Burtka who are reportedly getting ready for a gaybee.

Joan Rivers Lists Connecticut Country House

SELLER: Joan Rivers
LOCATION: White Oaks Road, New Milford, CT
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 5,730 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Stone & clapboard sprawling country house. High standards. Incredible taste. Swimming pool. Pool house. Caretaker's cottage. Barn/garage. Pond. Amazing Views.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In late May of 2009, much nipped and tucked comedienne Joan Rivers hoisted her Manhattan penthouse apartment on the market with a toe curling asking price of $25,000,000. It was reported in the New York Times that Miz Rivers put the apartment on the market because she plans to spend more time on the West Coast where her also much nipped and tucked look-alike daughter Melissa lives in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles.

All the real estate gossips and celebrity watchers wondered if Miz Rivers, who bulldozed her way to winning the most recent season of The Celebrity Apprentice, would also list her country house in lovely Litchfield County, CT. And she has, with folks at Klemm Real Estate, for $6,500,000.

Property records and previous reports indicate Miz Rivers scooped up her multi-parcel estate in New Milford which totals more than 75 acres in December of 2000 for $1,438,400. The existing house on the property, according to Miz Rivers in a February 2003 article in Architectural Digest (requires registration) was, "the ugliest house [she'd] ever seen. It looked like a Denny's." So she hired a retail merchandising queen friend of hers named Joe to give the place a full face lift and turn into a "small and cozy" house where her beloved pooches could get up on the sofas with impunity.

The "squat" mid-century modern style house was razed except for the foundation, a few stone columns and the sizable stone fireplace in the living room. The result of the redo is, according to property records and listing information, a 5,760 square foot single story stone and clapboard sprawler with 4 bedrooms, 4.5 Carrara marble bathrooms, 22-foot ceilings, 100 year old chestnut wood beams, four fireplaces and a dozen or more French doors that open to a free-form stone terrace that stretches along the back the house and looks out over a bucolic vista of rolling lawns, old-growth trees and the mountains in the distance.

Although Miz Rivers posseses a mouth as foul as they come and she can shred a person as quickly and easily as she can slice through fresh bread with a sharp knife, she's actually a woman of discerning style and traditional decorative taste as is evidenced by the acres of fringed and mismatched Scalamandré fabrics, 18th century bird engravings, Hudson River School paintings, antique doo-hickeys, picture frames and dust collecting gew-gaws that clutter up almost every damn flat surface in the house.

Although we are not entirely convinced Miz Rivers even eats, there is none the less a large country kitchen with a soaring beamed ceiling, bacteria collecting butcher block counter tops, distressed wood floors, a lot of white cabinetry and a full complement stainless steel appliances. Sitting high above the stove top and hood is a large oil painting and shelves with pewter looking this and thats that Your Mama imagines are caked with cooking grease and hopes are stuck down with museum putty lest they fall off and crack Cook's head right open.

In the Architectural Digest article Mrs. Rivers says about her cotton candy pink and blush colored bedroom, "This is the bedroom every little girl wants." Do we even need to tell the children that it makes Your Mama queasy just to think of a senior citizen doing up her bedroom as a gurlish fantasy? The only thing worse is when a grown woman (or man) has stuffed animals on their beds which is just plain creepy, desperate and wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Far more upsetting than a grandma having a bedroom decorated for a pre-pubescent gurl, however, is the mirrored and marbled master pooper where a pair of female Blackamoors with with ferns on their damn heads flank the bath tub. We do not care that these statues are from the set of Babs Streisand's Hello, Dolly!, they still give Your Mama goose bumps but not in a good way.

Not pictured or mentioned in listing information, but lovingly lauded in the Architectural Digest article, is a decoratively whimsical (if sort of silly) hallway lined with antique mirrors and trompe l'oeil windows that depict the homes of some of Miz Rivers' hoity-toity friends and family including Prince Charles's Highgrove. Your Mama is dying to know if Miz Rivers hauls out her potty mouth when sitting around sipping Chardonnay with Prince Charles and his former mistress turned wifey Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

The extensive grounds include an (approximately) 1,200 foot long driveway ending in a large circular drive, a detached barn/garage (just try to imagine Miz River's driving a car without getting hysterical) and a vast expanse of grass that rolls down to a private pond. Away from the back of the house and tucked into a stand of trees is a swimming pool and pool house. If there is anything more comical than trying to imagine Joan Rivers piloting an automobile, it's Joan Rivers paddling around her pool in a demure swimsuit and flowered bathing cap.

Miz Rivers moving is without a doubt the East Coast's loss and the West Coast's gain and we imagine that Miz Rivers and her drum tight and increasingly Madame-esque face will soon be sitting in the back of a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce touring multi-million dollar homes in Los Angeles. We're on pins and needles waiting to hear from one of our informants what she buys and look forward to our invite to the house warming.