Big Ticket | Sold for $16 Million

By ROBIN FINN

A six-story Modernist brick town house that has weathered the burden of an ugly duckling reputation in its relatively short history at 7 East 69th Street sold for $16 million, in the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

Marketed as a one-family home ripe for renovation, the property - developed as a spec mansion in 1984 on the site of a two-family dwelling built in 1899 - was listed in June for $20 million. According to its listing broker, Guthrie Garvin of Massey Knakal Realty Services, it sold in an all-cash transaction.

On a prime historic block between Fifth and Madison Avenues, the house has a limestone-and-rose-brick facade and a pillared entrance designed by the Sag Harbor architect Hobart D. Betts. It has six bedrooms, six baths, three half-baths and an elevator.

The outdoor space includes front and rear decks with Central Park views and a sizable back garden. Despite its New Age aesth etic, construction was approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The 7,600-square-foot house originally went on the market for $5.5 million and, ostensibly because of its charm-deprived interiors and absence of Old World detail, was stranded there for three years until Edward Baron Cohen, sensing potential and a relative bargain for its nonpareil location, bought it for $4.5 million in 1988.

But Mr. Cohen, then the head of Cohen Brothers Realty, acknowledged that the interiors needed embellishing: “When you went into it, it was a horror,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “There was no taste whatsoever.” He rectified that by installing mahogany paneling in the library, adding crown molding and plastering the walls. Mr. Cohen used the house and one in Southampton as his residences until his death in 2009. The trustee of the property was his son Andrew B. Cohen, who lives nearby on East 67th Street in a more traditional 19 05 limestone town house that he found through Massey Knakal.

The anonymous buyer was listed as SBP 69th Street, a limited-liability company with a Lake Placid, N.Y., address. Mr. Garvin said that unlike some potential buyers, the new owners of the town house had no quibble with the layout or décor; it is his impression that they intend to move into it as is. The biggest drawing card: “It is on an unbelievable block, and it has all that outdoor space, which buyers seem to want these days,” he said. “And it's just a few steps from Central Park.”

Although Massey Knakal is known to specialize in investment and commercial properties, Mr. Garvin said the firm had expanded its footprint throughout the city in what he termed a very healthy town-house market, particularly on the Upper East Side.

“Just this year I've listed seven town houses in the $12-to-$25-million range, sold three, and have two others in contract,” he said. “There is no shortage of buyer activity around these specialty town-house properties that are coming available on the prime blocks at these price points. The interest level from both international and domestic buyers is very high; the town-house marketplace is definitely ratcheting up.”

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.