For years, Joan Rivers tried to find a buyer for her opulent Upper East Side apartment, to no avail. The comedian, who died in September 2014 in her native New York City during a routine medical procedure, first tried to sell her penthouse at 1 East 62nd St. in 2009 for $25 million, thinking it was time to live near her daughter Melissa in Los Angeles.
But for anyone who watched the Queen of Snark on her hit series “Joan & Melissa” and the “Fashion Police,” the permanent move to the West Coast was scrapped in favor of continued bi-coastal living. Who can forget the episode in which Rivers confronted her building’s next-door neighbors over their abundance of trash bags in the street? Her New York abode was fodder even for reality TV, so it was worth it for her to have kept the place.
Now, however, it is the end of an era for the Rivers’ estate. The 5,100-square-foot residence, whose decor and furnishings are straight out of Versailles, is back on the market for $28 million. That’s down from a one-time list price of $29.5 million, which Rivers’ sought for the palace/place in 2012. The listing is held by Leighton Candler of the Corcoran Group.
Grand and opulent decor
The triplex is pretty splendid, even if for those who find the decor as dramatic and hyperbolic as its owner. The entrance is through an exclusive elevator landing, which opens a grand ballroom and adjoining music room — all with 23-foot ceilings. There are gilded antique boiserie paneling and columns and two fireplaces. This place is meant for entertaining, which is what Rivers did for her legendary Thanksgiving and Passover gatherings complete with long, rented tables.
A mezzanine on the second floor overlooks the music room and ballroom and leads to the master suite, which has French doors opening to its own south-facing terrace with views of Central Park. There are also staff quarters and a separate, but contiguous two-bedroom, two-bath guest quarter has its own large living room with a fireplace and an eat-in kitchen.
The interior of Rivers’ apartment may be over the top in terms of the kinds of new-development condos being built and marketed in today’s blistering NYC real estate market, but this place is one of a kind, even if a new buyer decided to scrap Rivers’ decorative tip to Marie Antoinette.
Former Hemingway residence
Constructed in 1910, the limestone mansion just off 5th Ave. was built for John R. Drexel and his socialite wife Alice Troth Drexel. It’s the work of Horace Trumbauer, an architect well known for his classical revivalist aesthetic. The home was converted in the 1930s into apartments. According to previous listing information, one of the apartments in the building was home to Ernest Hemingway for many years.
Of course, even with such a pedigree, Rivers’ found ways to turn the elegant apartment into the butt of a joke — a pretty good one, too.
In August 2009, the home was still on the market when former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called her broker, offering to rent it for $200,000 a week — a notion Rivers’ considered under two conditions, saying at the time, “I thought it was great. I said I would give half the rent to Lockerbie (and the other half) to have an exterminator come and clean the apartment when he was done.”
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