The Manhattan townhouse where the French banker Olivier Sarkozy aimed to live in wedded bliss with former child star Mary-Kate Olsen has sold after a year on the market — and more than a year after the couple finalized their divorce.
Sarkozy, the half-brother of former French president Nicolas Sarkozyparted ways with the gutted Turtle Bay property to the tune of $10.3 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new owner: Deborah Osburn, the founder of online tile company Clé Tile.
Osburn resides in the San Francisco area and purchased the home to have as a base for bi-coastal living — and to own as a renovation project. Osburn told the Journal she wasn’t really looking for a home in New York, but fell in love with this listing after reading about it in the press.
“I couldn’t get it out of my head,” she told the outlet. “More creativity than I could imagine is oozing out of the walls of this house.”
Sarkozy, via a limited liability company, bought the 38-foot-wide home for $13.5 million from the artist David Deutsch in April 2014. He tried selling it last August for $11.5 million. In April, the property returned for sale asking $10.5 million, as The Post reported.
In between buying the Hunnewell Mansion and listing it, it appears, a dream died. Before their 2015 wedding, whose reception famously included “bowls and bowls filled with cigarettes, and everyone smoked the whole night” — which appears to have been held in this home — Sarkozy and Olsen embarked on a renovation. However, the process stalled; Sarkozy and Olsen then never moved in. Since listing for sale, listing images showed assorted shots of the interior, which remained empty.
Osburn told the paper that the property needs an HVAC system, an elevator, bathrooms and finished walls. Osburn’s plans also include restoring the property’s original European-inspired aesthetic and using tiles from her own company.
An outdoor space
Arched windows lead outside.
There are five fireplaces inside.
There’s even a large skylight.
The home dates to 1921 and was formerly the residence of Charlotte Hunnewell Sorchan, who later changed her name to Charlotte Martin after remarrying in 1921. She was an heiress to the Hunnewell railroad and banking fortune and created Turtle Bay Gardens — a shared patch of green surrounded by the block’s townhouses . Specifically, she owned 21 of those surrounding townhouses and had the goal to have her wealthy friends create a small community that would share the back garden. Those plans never materialized and she sold off the bulk of the properties, also in 1921.
“We wanted to inject our vision of Charlotte’s home in the present day,” Osborn told the outlet, adding she’s especially drawn to the ballroom with a 22-foot coffered and colorful wood ceiling.
Osborn will also have five stories of living space, five fireplaces, six bedrooms, a garage, mirrored walls, a massive skylight and arched windows that lead to the outdoors. Outside, and as Martin intended, there are gardens, which local homeowners share the cost of maintaining.
Catherine Juracich and Thomas Ventura of the Corcoran Group repped the seller. Victoria Reichelt, also of Corcoran, represented the buyer.
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