LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $11,500,000
SIZE: 6,009 square feet,
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, the industrious peeps who pen the Page Six column at The New York Post printed and posted a juicy ditty about the apparently quite active romantic life of Eric Schmidt, the middle-aged and technically still married multi-billionaire executive chairman of Google.
Mister Schmidt's long-time wife, Wendy, was interviewed for an August 2012 profile in The New York Times and she pretty much confirmed the eons-old Silicon Valley scuttlebutt about her and Mister Schmidt living separate lives. She lives primarily on Nantucket (MA) and he, when not gallivanting the globe, more than 3,000 miles away in the affluent Bay Area community of Atherton (CA). They meet up, apparently, when their busy schedules allow. He, she told the Times, flies in for brief visits and she typically spends some time at the family compound in Atherton in during the winter.
Of course, the rules and regulations of Mister and Missus Schmidt's long-distance marriage ain't nobody's bizness but for years now gossip columns have run occasional tidbits about Mister Schmidt's dalliances with various women who are not his wife. He's most recently been spotted around town with Vietnamese concert pianist Cho-San Nguyen who was formerly affianced to television and film producer Brian Grazer. In September 2012 Page Six reported that Mister Schmidt had a "complicated" relationship with "New Yorker Lisa Shields, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations" who, so the stories go, he dated for a couple of years, and in July 2011 the naughty gossips at Gawker named two other former lady friends of the high-tech Lothario.
Adding dish to the dirt about Mister Schmidt's extra-marital lady-chasing ways, yesterday's article in The Post went on to tittle-tattle that earlier this summer Mister Schmidt (allegedly) "asked his aides to find alluring female companions to 'decorate his yacht,'" a sleek 195-footer with a gym that converts to a disco that he snatched up in 2009 for $72.3 million and makes available for charter at a rate of $399,000 per week.
Anyhoodles, poodles, fascinating as Mister Schmidt's romantic life may be to the hoi polloi it's his real estate that really interest Your Mama and yesterday's Post article happened to mentioned that Mister Schmidt owns a "sprawling $15 million penthouse" in New York City's Flatiron District that "was featured as the glamorous crash pad for Shia La Beouf's character in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." Well, you coulda knocked this property gossip out cold with a dead fish. We certainly recall when that apartment was on the market but we had no idea it had been bought by Mister Schmidt. It took Your Mama about 7.2 seconds to call up property records (and other online resources) that show in July 2011 an ambiguously named corporate concern coughed up $14.6 million to acquire the duplex penthouse identified in The Post as Mister Schmidt's "sprawling $15 million penthouse."
We don't know if Mister Schmidt has reconfigured or otherwise altered the penthouse since his purchase two years ago but The Post says he's "spent millions" having the place soundproofed because, according to the paper's source, "he 'doesn't sleep well.'" What we do know is that at the time of the purchase the lower level of the duplex had a vast, open-plan main living/dining/kitchen space anchored by a gigantic fireplace with imposing carved stone mantel and behind the main living areas were three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
Listing photos show a floating staircase ascended to an upper level lounge area with another half bathroom and a—glory be!—a walk-in wet bar. Sliding glass windows and French doors on three walls open the lounge area to an unusually roomy and fully planted/landscaped wrap around roof terrace with and unobstructed, head on view of the Empire State Building. Also upstairs at the time of Mister Schmidt's purchase was the master suite, complete with a fireplace, good-sized walk-in closet/dressing room, and a compartmentalized bathroom slathered in limestone.
Other notable features in place at the time of Mister Schmidt's purchase include a private elevator—a must have feature according to The Post's source—a small media room just off the main living/dining/kitchen area, a stacked washer and dryer in a tiny closet next to the powder pooper, and a fully integrated indoor/outdoor sound system. Common charges were shown on the 2011 listing at $2,300 per month, a remarkably minimal amount for an apartment of this size. The low monthly charges probably have something to do with the fact that the building does not have a doorman, another feature—or lack thereof—that The Post's source claimed was important to Mister Schmidt.
Mister Schmidt purchased the property, according to property records from Richard M. Weissman, an obviously wealthy fella identified by Vanity Fair as a financier who's Dartmouth College's all time 16th leading rusher, whatever that means. Since the listing photos are from the time Mister Schmidt acquired the penthouse from Mister Weissman, and the decor—if it can be called that—reflects the taste—if it can be called that—of the seller and not the buyer. We don't know canned corn from chaise lounge, of course, but doesn't it seem fairly safe to assume Mister Schmidt engaged the expensive services of a nice-gay or lady decorator to do up his Flatiron penthouse in a manner befitting a Digital Age baron with a net worth estimated by Forbes to be in excess of $8 billion?
In addition to his New York penthouse Mister Schmidt maintains a small but impressive portfolio of private residences that include a stunning George Washington Smith-designed casa on more than four acres in Montecito, CA that he bought for $20 million in September 2007 from house hopping comedienne/chat show hostess Ellen Degeneres and her horse lovin' lady-mate Portia de Rossi.
Mister and Missus Schmidt's primary family compound in Atherton (CA) currently comprises three gated and secured parcels that add up to just about 3.5 mostly manicured acres. The first parcel was purchased in mid-1990 for $2,000,000 and has, according to the San Mateo County Tax Man, a 4,800+ square foot house with 5 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. A second, adjacent parcel (with a smaller 3,170 residence) was acquired in March 2000 for $2,150,000 and the third parcel was picked up in May 2007 for $3,870,000.
In the late 1990s Mister and Missus Schmidt bought a big house on the scenic island of Nantucket. The imposing residence, set behind 10-foot privacy hedges, is where Missus Schmidt lives most of the time and sits on the same swanky stretch of road as a number of other notable folk including Arie Kopelman—the former CEO of Chanel and Drew Barrymore's father-in-law, venture capitalist Julius Jensen III, luxury mail order catalog mogul turned Tony-winning Broadway producer Roger Horchow, and Frank Avellino, a financier heavily invovled in feeding funds to Wall Street scoundrel Bernie Madoff.
listing photos and floor plan: Aligned Real Estate
