Category — Park Avenue

Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld’s 16-room New York City co-op apartment at 640 Park Avenue is the kind of asset that securities class-action lawyers salivate over.


Although the legendary investment bank filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in September, that didn’t prompt Fuld and his wife Kathy to sell their 6,200 square foot full-floor cooperative apartment on the northwest corner of East Sixty-Sixth Street and Park Avenue.

When the couple bought this gigantic “fixer upper” in March 2007 for $21 million from the estate of publishing heiress Evelyn Annenberg Jaffe Hall, an anonymous real estate broker told the New York Post that the apartment needed about $10 million worth of renovations.

The apartment has a 40-foot living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a generous dining room, both of which overlook Park Avenue. The library and master bedroom also have fireplaces. There is also a 14′ x 25′ gallery in the middle of the apartment. You can see the that there are at least four (4) rooms for staff. At this price, you also get to use a washer and dryer in the co-op. The cooperative was built in 1914 and is pet-friendly.

Fuld must be a tough negotiator; he knocked down the original $23.75 million price by $2.75 million. The original list price was more than $27 million.

Stribling brokers Kirk Henckels and Jessica Brookbanks had the exclusive for the co-op when they sold it to the Fulds.

The Fulds also have a luxury estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. Kathy Fuld must be feeling the effects of Lehman’s bankruptcy pretty hard if it prompted her to sell some $20 million of the couple’s artwork through Christies auction house.

Energy magnate John Edelman and Manhattan socialite Ingrid Edelman just paid $22 million for a duplex co-op at 775 Park Avenue.


They paid 8.33% less than the asking price of $24 million listed by John Burger, an SVP and Managing Director at Brown Harris Stevens.

The transaction was part of an estate sale following the death of the late Frances Todman in January this year. Todman was the widow of TV game show producer William Todman who, together with Mark Goodson, produced an incredible number of television game show hits like The Price is Right, What’s My Line, I’ve Got a Secret, and To Tell the Truth.

The 12 room, 4 bedroom, 4½ bathroom co-op apartment overlooks Park Avenue on the Southeast corner of East 73rd Street, and features no less than three fireplaces. It’s located in a pre-war building constructed in 1927 by famed New York architect Rosario Candela.

John Edelman made his fortune in the oil business. Ingrid Edelman is a N.Y. socialite and interior decorator who has made political donations to GOP candidates.

Neighbors in the cooperative include:

• Money manager Everett Cook and his wife Karen Cook who are involved with the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women philanthropy. They paid $7,975,000 for their apartment in April 2008.
• Dr. Elizabeth A. Maher, an ophthalmologist who recently obtained sole ownership of a high-floor apartment in the building in a divorce settlement with her ex-husband James Maher.
• Andrew Georges and Heather Georges who paid $7.6 million for a lower floor duplex in 2006
• Former Bank of America media dealmaker Stephen Ketchum and Cynthia Ketchum, who paid $6.2 million for their lower floor apartment in 2005

Photo: Brown Harris Stevens

How low can you go? That’s a question that co-op apartment owners at 791 Park Avenue are probably asking themselves following buyer Gary Gelman’s purchase of a fifth-floor cooperative in the building located at East 74th Street.


Gelman knocked $820,000 off of the apartment’s original $9.95 million list price, paying $9.175 million.

Those are some great negotiation skills, especially when the sellers are Bear Stearns Director Daniel Keating and his wife Janet Keating. Looks like the investment bank’s debacle may have led the Keatings to quickly sell their Park Avenue co-op for eight-figures, and relocate to a 4-figure rental apartment in Waterside Plaza along the East River.

The sellers’ listing agent was Halstead broker Nancy Coffey (inset).

The apartment is huge. It has 4-bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms with approximately 3,700 square feet over eleven rooms. Monthly maintenance charges were $3,800 at the time it was on the market. The 14-floor pre-war co-op is pet-friendly, has its own gym, and storage space for shareholders.

Fancy kitchen accoutrements include a culinary space chock full of high-end appliances, a butler’s pantry, custom cabinetry, and a breakfast nook.

Did the buyer need a room for his books or to smoke a stogie after a hard day of making money? He’s got it: one of the bedrooms was transformed into a wood-paneled library.