After Olivier Sarkozy purchased a mixed townhouse at 226-228 East forty ninth Road within the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in April 2014, and shortly earlier than he married Mary-Kate Olsen in November 2015, the couple kicked off what was purported to be an bold, top-to-bottom renovation.
However issues didn’t go in accordance with plan. The renovation stalled, the couple divorced earlier this yr, and now Mr. Sarkozy, a banker who’s the half brother of the previous French president Nicolas Sarkozy, is promoting.
“They by no means lived there,” stated Michael Bolla, an agent at Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty who’s itemizing the property. He stated that Ms. Olsen, the previous actress and dressmaker who based The Row along with her twin sister, Ashley, isn’t an proprietor.
“It’s his home,” Mr. Bolla stated. “He was the purchaser, and he’s the vendor.”
But at first, the couple tapped Ms. Olsen’s design contacts for the renovation. In keeping with metropolis data, the architect on the job was Montalba Architects, the identical agency that designed The Row’s first flagship retailer, in Los Angeles.
Mr. Sarkozy purchased the townhouse, which incorporates some 8,700 sq. ft over 5 flooring, from the artist David Deutsch for $13.5 million, via a restricted legal responsibility firm. He’s now asking $11.5 million, Mr. Bolla stated, a reduction that displays the unfinished state of the inside. (Annual property taxes are $101,870.)
“It’s being bought as is,” he stated.
A lot has been torn out, though among the residence’s distinctive parts stay, together with a lounge with two fireplaces beneath an elaborately embellished 22-foot-high coffered ceiling. A rooftop pool and elevator had been eliminated, Mr. Bolla stated.
The townhouse, which has a storied previous, backs onto Turtle Bay Gardens, a personal, shared oasis enclosed by townhouses on East forty eighth and East forty ninth Streets, between Second and Third Avenues, which collectively type the Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District.
Mr. Sarkozy’s townhouse was as soon as residence to Charlotte Hunnewell Sorchan (who modified her final identify to Martin after remarrying in 1921), who created the gardens after shopping for a cluster of 21 townhouses in 1919 with the imaginative and prescient of cultivating a lavish, shared yard.
“She had this concept, whereas speaking with a few of her wealthy mates on the Ritz-Carlton Resort over tea, of getting a gaggle collectively that might rehabilitate and renovate the rowhouses collectively and create a neighborhood,” stated Andrew S. Dolkart, a professor of historic preservation on the Columbia College Graduate Faculty of Structure, Planning and Preservation. “That didn’t truly pan out, so she determined to do it herself.”
After shopping for the townhouses, she employed the architects Edward C. Dean and William Lawrence Bottomley to renovate all of them. Every was completely different, however alongside East forty eighth Road, the architects designed new facades within the Georgian fashion; alongside East forty ninth Road, facades had a extra Flemish fashion.
Behind the homes, the final six ft of every yard was used to ascertain a shared 12-foot-wide stroll for the gardens, which have fountains and luxurious plantings. Low partitions had been constructed to delineate personal gardens with out blocking sightlines.
Mrs. Martin saved 226-228 East forty ninth Road as her own residence and bought off a lot of the different homes after development was accomplished in 1921. “She bought the houses at price,” stated Pamela Hanlon, the writer of “Manhattan’s Turtle Bay: Story of a Midtown Neighborhood,” aside from 4 models that she initially rented.
“They instantly attracted very creative folks,” Ms. Hanlon stated. “Writers, theatrical personalities, in addition to some prime legal professionals.”
Over time, residents have included the writer E.B. White, the actress Katharine Hepburn, the composer Stephen Sondheim, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, the playwright and director Garson Kanin and the e book editor Maxwell Perkins, who labored with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
A willow tree that lengthy grew in Turtle Bay Gardens was immortalized by Mr. White on the conclusion of his 1949 e book, “Right here Is New York,” during which he wrote about “a battered tree, lengthy struggling and far climbed, held collectively by strands of wire,” as a logo of town’s resilience.
That tree was minimize down in 2009, however the restrictions that Mrs. Martin initially placed on the properties to create the gardens largely stay, after being renewed by the house owners of the townhouses every time they expired.
These restrictions preserve the 12-foot-wide walkway, forestall the constructing of excessive partitions and fences, prohibit kitchens from dealing with the gardens, require vents to be routed via the roof or entrance of every constructing and prohibit drying garments or storing trash cans behind the houses.
The house owners share the prices of sustaining the frequent stroll and gardens. The payment for 226-228 East forty ninth Road is $3,200 a yr, Mr. Bolla stated, paid quarterly.
Though the townhouse isn’t move-in prepared, it could possibly be remodeled into a shocking single- or two-family residence, Mr. Bolla insisted: “It’s in search of its subsequent matriarch.”
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