The New York Times’s real estate section has the news of a $55m apartment sale that unearths the interesting story of a private dealer in Asian art who lived in a grand style. Robert Ellsworth claimed he wasn’t the best Asian art dealer, just the richest.
First dealing from a shop, then from an apartment he shared with actress Claudette Colbert, Ellsworth eventually moved to Fifth Avenue where he conducted business for the remainder of his life.
Mr. Ellsworth’s residence at 960 Fifth Avenue, at 77th Street, has 22 rooms encompassing the entire third floor of the 12-story co-op building designed by Rosario Candela in the late 1920s.
Mr. Ellsworth, who also had a weekend home in Connecticut, called his sprawling Manhattan apartment “the honey pot” and filled it with some of his extensive collection of artwork, which included Chinese paintings and bronzes, Japanese lacquer and Himalayan sculptures.
Art Dealer’s Fifth Avenue Co-op Sells for $55 Million (The New York Times)