At 6,000 square feet, the penthouse on Park Avenue purchased by celebrity couple Scarlett Johansson (the actor best known for Black Widow, Lucy, The Avengers) and Colin Jost (a staff writer for Saturday Night Live), is actually a marvel.
There are six bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, and six wood burning stoves (someone want to do a quick numerology check on all these sixes?). There’s a library and a breakfast nook. Five terraces! Eight balconies! And three floors with a staggering 65 windows. And yet, though it was originally listed for $27.5 million, in 2018, Johansson and Jost picked it up for a mere $13.
So why was it such a steal? It’s just the way the market is handling real estate, at the moment, if you ask the Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Clarke. It’s also a slow response to the turning tide of interest in the Upper East Side, which has a reputation for being less fun and lively than other downtown areas.
That said, there’s not a lot more quintessentially New York than this address, situated just blocks off Central Park and a few from Carnegie Hall. The building itself, a 16-story Arc Deco beauty designed by the architect Rosario Candela, can be found in the book The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter. So yes, it’s a steal, but it’s a high-value property, nonetheless. Perhaps the lesson here is: The Upper East Side is where to buy.
