Real Estate Industry News

Academy Award-winning actor Susan Sarandon was born in New York City, and she makes her home there. Now that her three children are grown and she requires less space, the five-bedroom Chelsea loft she purchased in 1991 is on the market. It is a rare gem: a Manhattan home in a desirable neighborhood with generous amounts of indoor and outdoor space, including a broad terrace and, off the master bedroom, a private balcony. While currently designed with five bedrooms, an immense corner library can easily be adapted to a sixth bedroom.   

The 6,000 + square foot duplex has four exposures, including a sixty-foot-wide expanse of southern light, plus dramatic vistas of Manhattan’s most iconic buildings, stretching from the World Trade Tower to the Empire State Building. The loft building was constructed as a warehouse in 1923, one of the steel structures now prized by Manhattan homeowners. The area at the crossroads of Greenwich Village, Flatiron and West Chelsea was once called Greenwich Village North.

A key-locked elevator takes us to the eighth floor and opens into a private gallery foyer, which, in turn, leads into dramatic living space.  This floor includes a palatial living room, a library, a den with a wood-burning fireplace, an open kitchen, a large dining area, lounge, a sumptuous main bedroom, a guest room, a laundry room, voluminous storage and three full baths. 

The 37’ X 27’ living room features a curved staircase that doubled as audience seating for the Oscar winner’s children’s performances and celebrity dance recitals. The sweeping staircase leads to a comfortable reading refuge with a wood-burning fireplace and bookshelves. The open kitchen, large dining area, and sunken media lounge allow for gracious entertaining. The main bedroom looks out on the Empire State Building and features a balcony, soaking tub, en-suite windowed bath, and dressing room.  The corner library faces East and South, with views of Union Square Park and the Con Ed building to the East and the World Trade Center to the South. Art collectors and musicians are served by a second freight elevator, big enough for large art installation or a grand piano.

The home’s most personal room is what is referred to as the Academy Award bath: a cobalt blue bathroom decorated with awards, mementoes and prizes from Sarandon’s illustrious multi-decade career. 

“Her loft is reflective of who she is,” says listing broker Mara Flash Blum of Sotheby’s International Realty. “There is so much life, so much creativity. She produced documentary films here. One of her cherished mementoes, which is here now, is the table from Lorenzo’s Oil.”

The seventh floor is a private guest quarters with key-locked elevator entry. It boasts three exposures: north, south and west and includes three more bedrooms, a family room, an open kitchen, two baths, storage galore and a forty-three-foot terrace with an Empire State Building view. 

La Fabrique is a boutique loft cooperative a short distance from Chelsea Market Place, the High Line, Union Square Farmer’s Market, and the Flatiron District’s Fifth Avenue shopping corridor.

The loft is offered for $7.9 million, an unusually attractive price for a home of this size, location and provenance.

“Because of Covid-19, this is a very good price for this property,” Blum says. “Before the outbreak and the subsequent quarantine, it would have been offered for $10 million. This is a great opportunity for someone.”