Late Hotelier’s UES Maisonette Snags Signed Contract At $23M

The widow of the late hotelier Robert Burns is trading the couple’s Upper East Side maisonette. 

A buyer signed a contract to purchase the duplex at 2 East 70th Street for $22.5 million, down from the $29 million the pair sought for it in 2016, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly report. 

The pending deal was the priciest of 16 inked in Manhattan last week for homes asking $4 million or more, which was more than the 13 notched in the previous period. 

Burns and his wife, Janice, bought the co-op for $13.5 million in 2010 from the estate of Marion Taylor, the widow of the former U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland, Henry Taylor. The couple later renovated the maisonette with architect Peter Pennoyer. 

The home initially hit the market a decade ago, before the couple pulled the listing after six months. It was listed again in May, almost a year after Burns, founder of Regent International Hotels, died at 96 years old. 

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home is attached to the Rosario Candela-designed co-op, though it has its own separate entrance on Fifth Avenue. It also features a 30-foot great room with a fireplace and views of Central Park, as well as a formal dining room and library. 

Amenities in the 19-unit co-op building include white-glove service, a gym and storage. 

The property has been home to a number of prominent residents, including the late Ted Frostmann, former chairman and CEO of IMG Worldwide, whose estate sold his penthouse in 2012 for $40 million. Two years prior, James Shinn, who served as secretary of defense under George W. Bush’s administration, and his wife, Masako, bought a triplex in the building for $11.8 million. 

The late actress Joan Crawford also once lived in the building with her husband, former PepsiCo CEO Alfred Steele, in the late 1950s and 1960s. 

Brown Harris Stevens’ Louise Phillips Forbes had the listing. 

The second most expensive home to find a buyer was a penthouse at the Related Companies and Oxford Property Group’s 15 Hudson Yards. The apartment last asked just under $10 million, down from the $13 million it sought when the developers began marketing units in 2016.

Unit PH87B spans 3,100 square feet and has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. It also features 11-foot ceilings with views of the Hudson River. 

Corcoran Sunshine Marketing, led by the Hottinger and the Arsic Lau teams, is heading sales at the 285-unit tower. Its amenities include a fitness center, 75-foot pool and residents’ lounge. 

Of the 16 properties to enter contract, 12 were condos, three were co-ops and one was a condop. 

The homes were priced at a combined $111 million, averaging $6.9 million and with a median of $5.2 million. The typical home spent two and a half years on the market and was discounted by 6 percent.

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