Own a piece of history — for $44 million!
Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s childhood home is now on the market at uber posh 740 Park Avenue, which is still considered the city’s most elite trophy address.
The building has a notoriously tough co-op board but even before Jackie met Jack, she still had an “in” — her grandfather, James T. Lee, was the building’s developer.
The 19 story Art Deco limestone building, created in 1929 by famed architect Rosario Candela, has just 31 units.
The sprawling apartment on the sixth and seventh floors is 8000 square feet. It comes with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a staff wing — and a hefty $13,278 a month maintenance fee.
The stunning duplex also includes a marble gallery, a grand “sweeping staircase,” a formal living room with a fireplace and a bronze bar, along with a paneled library with a fireplace, custom built-in bookcases — and a formal dining room, perfect for entertaining, that also includes a fireplace.
There’s also a chef’s kitchen with a “sunny breakfast room,” according to the listing. The master suite includes two marble bathrooms, two dressing rooms, and two offices.
The sellers are former hedge funder David Ganek and his novelist wife Danielle, who have used the apartment as a backdrop to showcase just some pieces from their extensive art collection.
Ganek’s firm, Level Global Investors, shut down in 2011 following an FBI raid in the midst of an insider trading scandal.
Ganek’s co-founder and partner, Anthony Chiasson, was sentenced to six and a half years in jail.
At its peak, the firm managed $4.2 billion.
Last year, the defunct firm agreed to pay $21.5 million in fines and penalties to the SEC.
“The insider trading at Level Global was hardly an isolated event – it occurred repeatedly, and involved multiple companies and multiple quarterly announcements,” Sanjay Wadhwa, a senior S.E.C. lawyer in New York, said in a statement at the time. “This settlement serves as another reminder that the SEC will hold hedge fund managers accountable when their employees violate the securities laws.”
The Ganeks bought Jackie O’s former childhood pad for $19.1 million in 2005. Building residents have included Vera Wang, David Koch and Woody Johnson.
In April, the Post reported that the French government’s duplex at 740 Park Avenue sold for an eye-popping $70 million — far above its $48 million asking price. That deal was a tie for the city’s most expensive co-op sale, on par with Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris’s recent $70 million purchase of a penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue that was owned by the late Edgar Bronfman.