Tour Joan Rivers' Longtime Palatial $38M New York Penthouse
The late comedian Joan Rivers called New York City home until her death in 2014, specifically a [...]
Trumbauer originally designed the Upper East Side apartment for socialites John and Alice Troth Drexel in 1903, and it eventually became an exclusive apartment house with nine units in the 1930s. Rivers purchased the home in 1988, one year after her husband Edgar Rosenberg's death, when she sold her home in Los Angeles and moved to New York. The comedian lived in the apartment for 28 years and hosted a number of celebrities, including Princess Diana.
Rivers decorated the apartment in lavish style and kept to the French-themed architecture. "It's what Marie Antoinette would have done, if she had money," she said in an interview, describing her home as "Louis XIV meets Fred and Ginger."
A private elevator entry hall opens into a two-story gallery that adjoins the living room. The reception rooms feature 23-foot ceilings and parquet-de-Versailles flooring, and the home has five wood-burning fireplaces. Iron scrollwork, paneling on the walls and a cloud-painting ceiling only add to the French feel.
One of the fireplaces is located in one of the penthouse's four bedrooms, and two more are in a corner-paneled library and a formal dining room, both of which feature ornate 18th-century French panels and overlook a south-facing terrace. Views of Central Park certainly contribute to the apartment's price tag. Other features include a ballroom, music room and antique columns.
Along with Rivers, the apartment was also home to a ghost, according to the comedian, who featured the property on a 2009 episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories. Rivers believed that the paranormal being was the ghost of a former resident named Mrs. Spencer, and Rivers called on a voodoo priestess from Louisiana to help her. She also found an old portrait of Mrs. Spencer in the basement, cleaned it up and hung it in the hallway above a table with a vase of flowers.
