Ah, to be 25 again and buying one’s very first Fifth Avenue penthouse.
Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images
It was just a few years ago that Gracie Abrams was shooting sad-girl music videos from a rumpled, messy bedroom in Los Angeles. Now, she’s buying a penthouse. Specifically, a three-bedroom at the top of a 1927 trophy co-op, as The Real Deal first reported, a Greenwich Village spread with three terraces, a formal dining room, and a kitchen that looks like it was designed before the 25-year-old was born.
A listing photo shows a kitchen with dark marble backsplashes and lots of chrome that seems to be older than 1999.
Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
One Fifth Avenue, at the corner of East 8th Street, once served as a hotel for wealthy artists, as my colleague Matthew Sedacca previously reported. If that isn’t an oxymoron, it’s an apt description for Abrams, the offspring of J.J. Abrams, director of the Star Wars reboot and other movies set on distant worlds (Armageddon, Lost). Gracie Abrams herself is no longer just releasing music on Instagram; after opening for her friend Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, she sold out stadiums last year on her headlining tour, doing so well that fans went apoplectic over a $700 seat advertised for her Madison Square Garden appearance.
One Fifth. 18GK is one of those units near the top with a zillion tiny terraces.
Photo: Steve Rosenbach/Shutterstock
Still, it’s kind of weird that she’d want to live here. There’s a bright, cheery unfussiness to her style that might be a little odd in a building with a dark, columned, old-school lobby, or where other owners include aging “die-hard Republicans.” But there’s a bohemian lineage here that tracks: Keith Richards and Patti Smith both lived here, with Smith even shooting the cover for Horses in the building.
Other Hollywood types have also made a go of the building. Directors Brian De Palma, Ira Sachs, and Tim Burton have lived here. So have Helena Bonham Carter (Burton’s talented ex-wife, of course) and Jessica Lange, who did what a lot of 21st-century buyers did and combined smaller former hotel rooms into “four-bedroom Frankenapartments with bamboo flooring and cabinetry, gold-trimmed bathrooms, and unobstructed views of the Freedom Tower,” as Sedacca wrote.
Abrams paid $5.5 million for 18GK, which must have once been a combination of two hotel suites (G and K). And she may have far-fetched plans to make it even bigger. In November, she bought a smaller $1.95 million unit on a lower floor (16D) from the abstract Swiss artist John Sennhauser. But it isn’t clear how those could be combined, since there’s a floor in the way. Maybe the plan for 16D is to make it a guest room, or even just a spot where Abrams can stay as she does work on her penthouse. The unit will “likely need a renovation,” as the seller’s brokers told The Real Deal. Abrams bought from an estate, and the unit has a pre-1999 kitchen and two bathrooms that were apparently not sharp enough to even include in the listing. A virtual listing shows the hardwoods staged with a darker stain in some shots (maybe they’re damaged?). And the terraces, with big pinkish concrete tiles, look a little, well, lame.
Last summer, a Glamour profile reported that Abrams was “itching to move to New York permanently.” She has friends here, including Swift, and of course Paul Mescal, who’s currently having a Brando turn at BAM in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Additional reporting by Matthew Sedacca.
A listing photo might include virtually tweaked floors but does show the apartment’s lovely bones: a living area that bends into a formal dining room, where a door leads to one of three terraces.
Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
A listing photo shows the largest terrace in unit 18GK, where planters might be hiding vaguely lame brickwork. The concrete tile underfoot may not meet the standards of an L.A. native.
Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
A listing photo for the unit that Abrams bought downstairs shows it also has outdoor space, which may have been tended by its last artist resident.
Photo: Compass
This listing photo for 16D shows a large living area furnished in a way that seems more of Abrams’s style (eclectic, artsy), but the apartment has fewer bedrooms and is on a lower floor.
Photo: Compass
A listing photo shows the bedroom at 16D, the smaller downstairs unit, is smaller and darker.
Photo: Compass