British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the “Golden Age” Joan Fontaine’s once-owned glam Upper East Side co-op is on the market for $7.95 million.
Fontaine is probably best remembered for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion,” for which she won a Best Actress Oscar in 1942. She is also remembered for her epic rivalry with her one-year-older sister, Olivia de Havilland, who is best known for her role as Melanie in “Gone with the Wind.”
The sisters were famously at odds during their long lives; at the age of nine, Olivia was asked by her teacher to write a last will and testament. She wrote. “I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister, Joan, since she has none.” Meow! Olivia, who was annoyed she didn’t win an Oscar for “Gone with the Wind,” was even more annoyed when she was nominated again in 1942 and Joan won instead of her! Olivia did, however, go on to win two Oscars, so she won that race in the end, according to Dirt.
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Whatever beef she had with her big sis, Joan certainly had fine taste in apartments. Built in 1928, the co-op building, with just 20 residences, was also the home of socialite and Jackie-Kennedy-sister Lee Radziwill. A private elevator opens to a vestibule with handsome parquet flooring. Beyond that is a 30-foot long, high-ceilinged living room with a wood-burning fireplace and built-in bookcases. The library, with wood paneling and arched windows, also boasts a wood-burning fireplace, though the fireplace in the formal dining room is merely decorative. The windowed kitchen is spacious, especially for a Manhattan apartment, with a large island and top-of-the-line appliances. There’s a huge butler’s pantry to one side, and a laundry room and a guest or staff bedroom with marble bath on the other.
Down a long corridor that glistens with lacquered eggplant paint, the bedroom wing comprises three sleeping chambers; two en-suite guest bedrooms, one with a Juliet balcony that overlooks townhouse gardens, and the silk-carpeted primary suite, replete with a decorative fireplace and a marble bath. Of course, all the bedrooms have enough closet space to satisfy a Golden Age and/or modern-day Hollywood icon.
The grand residence is available via Leslie Coleman and Christina Lee at Brown Harris Stevens. Maintenance is a costly $11,220 a month; the sellers, a couple in finance, paid $8.67 million for the place in 2013.
Apart from family bitterness, the unit is lovely. A private elevator landing opens to an entrance gallery, which leads to a 30-foot living room with a woodburning fireplace, built-in bookcases and casement windows overlooking 72nd Street.
There’s also a wood-paneled library with arched windows and a woodburning fireplace, as well as a formal dining room with a decorative fireplace and a windowed chef’s kitchen.
The separate bedroom wing includes a main bedroom with a decorative fireplace and an ensuite marble bath.
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Sources: Dirt, The New York Post
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