Two decades after his company helped build what was then known as the Time Warner Center, Stephen M. Ross has found a buyer for his sprawling penthouse atop one of the towers on Columbus Circle.
The sale price for the 8,300-square-foot aerie was $40 million, a steep price cut from the $75 million he initially sought in the summer of 2019, though still topping the list of New York City closings at the start of the new year. The buyer was anonymous.
Mr. Ross is the founder of the Related Companies, which also developed the Hudson Yards megaproject, and the principal owner of the Miami Dolphins football team. He and his wife, Kara Ross, a jewelry designer from whom he is now separated, had moved into 25 Columbus Circle on the Upper West Side not long after the luxury complex was completed in 2004.
Other big sales in January took place on the Upper East Side. The fashion designer Reed Krakoff and his wife, Delphine Krakoff, an interior designer, sold their townhouse off Park Avenue, for $36 million; it had been listed for as much as $48 million. Kenneth I. Juster, the U.S. ambassador to India during the Trump administration, bought a condominium.
And the hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller and his wife, Fiona K. Druckenmiller, both philanthropists, sold their penthouse. The buyers were their daughter and son-in-law.
The actor and comedian John Leguizamo and his wife, Justine Leguizamo, also kept things in the family when they helped their daughter buy a Greenwich Village co-op — on the same block as their brownstone.
Also in the Village, the estate of the art dealer Margo Feiden, who died last year, sold the townhouse she had lived in for 34 years and used as a gallery, exhibiting works mainly from the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, whom she had represented for decades.
The Columbus Circle penthouse, owned by the Rosses and last on the market for $49.9 million, takes up the entire 80th floor of the south tower of what is now known as the Deutsche Bank Center, between West 58th and 60th Streets.
The new owner’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company US No. 9.
Included in this mansion in the sky are five bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, a den, library, media room, home gym, and an extra-large living room with two fireplaces. (There are four fireplaces in total.) The primary bedroom suite has dual marble bathrooms and custom-built dressing rooms, each with additional closets, a fashionista’s dream.
Throughout the space are what the listing broker, Adam D. Modlin of the Modlin Group, called “no expense spared” finishes, like marble and exotic woods in the flooring, doors, moldings and kitchen. But probably the best features are the magnificent panoramic vistas of nearby Central Park, and beyond, from the apartment’s walls of windows.
The views, Ms. Ross had said in a 2015 profile of the home by Architectural Digest, made it feel “like you’re actually living in the park. It’s as if you’re in a painting that’s always changing, from green to yellow to red to gray and slowly back to green again. It has a kind of power that most art can only dream about.”
When the penthouse was listed four years ago, Mr. Ross had told Forbes magazine that he planned to relocate to a 92nd-floor penthouse at 35 Hudson Yards.
The townhouse sold by the Krakoffs, at 54 East 64th Street in the Lenox Hill neighborhood, is even roomier than former Ross penthouse, measuring 12,500 square feet over six floors.
The fully renovated brick house, with a classic front stoop and ample exterior space, is what you might expect from sellers who are renowned designers. Mr. Krakoff, who rose to prominence as president and creative director of Coach, is now the chief artistic director of Tiffany & Company. The Parisian-born Ms. Krakoff is a principal of the interior design firm Pamplemousse.
Their stylish makeover has both a modern and Old World aesthetic that includes a sculpturelike central staircase and sizable rooms — 14 in all — anchored by fireplaces with antique English Carrara marble mantels and 18th-century oak floorboards, among the many high-end flourishes.
There are a total of six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and five half-baths (this includes the ground-floor staff quarters, which also has a kitchen), two sitting rooms, formal dining and living rooms, and a gym on the ground floor that opens to an ivy-covered backyard with a basketball hoop. The primary bedroom suite takes up the entire fifth floor and features two dressing rooms with added closets.
The crowning amenity, though, is at the very top of the house, where there are two rooftop terraces with ipe wood decking and irrigation.
And, yes, there’s also an elevator to get to all these places.
The new owner used the limited liability company 64th Street TH in the transaction.
The other Upper East Side notables included Mr. Juster’s $9.8 million purchase of an apartment at 109 East 79, a new 20-story condominium between Park and Lexington Avenues.
His 2,700-square-foot sponsor unit takes up half a floor and has three bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom, plus a powder room, laundry room and great room for formal dining and lounging, which gets tons of light coming in from the large, bronze-finished casement windows.
Mr. Juster, who made the purchase through a trust, served as ambassador to India from 2017 to 2021 and as an under secretary of commerce during the George W. Bush administration.
Nearby, at 117 East 72nd Street, also between Park and Lexington Avenues, the Druckenmillers sold their penthouse for $21 million to their daughter Dr. Sarah Druckenmiller Cascante, a physician in endocrinology and infertility, and her husband, Maximilian Cascante, an investment analyst. Because it was a private deal, little information is available about the apartment, which is a combination of two co-op units.
Downtown, in Greenwich Village, the Leguizamos paid almost $1.7 million for a co-op on the same tree-lined street, West Ninth Street, where they have a townhouse. The deed for the apartment is in their names and that of their daughter, Allegra Leguizamo, an actor known for her work in the “Ice Age” animated movies alongside Mr. Leguizamo.
Her new home has two bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms, along with a wood-burning fireplace and built-in bookshelves in the spacious living room.
Mr. Leguizamo has appeared in numerous films, including his most recent, “The Menu.”
The estate of Ms. Feiden got almost $10.4 million for her red brick townhouse at 15 East Ninth Street, near University Place. Ms. Feiden had bought the home in 1988 with her third husband, Julius Cohen, a well-known jewelry designer.
The five-story, Greek Revival building, on the market for just under $11 million, has around 9,500 square feet of interior space, which as the listing showed, could use a little T.L.C. There are eight bedrooms, five full bathrooms and a powder room. The garden level of the building, which includes a den and library, had been used for displaying artwork.
Built around the mid-1800s, the house has many of its original architectural details, including a wood-burning fireplace, herringbone floors and wood moldings. An enormous, high-ceilinged ballroom on the parlor level was designed by Stanford White.
Outdoor space includes an 827-square-foot backyard, a third-floor terrace and an unfinished rooftop deck that could be turned into a fabulous entertaining space for sipping cocktails high above the tree-lined neighborhood.
The buyer of the house was listed as Monstera Holdings L.L.C.
Ms. Feiden, who was also an author, met Mr. Hirschfeld in 1970, a year after she opened her gallery business, and he became her main client. She exhibited the work of other artists on occasion, including the theater illustrator Don Freeman.
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