John Legend, Chrissy Teigen Pick Up Penthouse Next Door
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – New York City’s high-end real estate market was in a discernible slump long before the coronavirus pandemic came along and all but shuttered the property market across the country. However, there were any number of notable, big dollar deals in the works long before people were asked to shelter in place and non-essential businesses were ordered to close. One of those transactions, as The Real Deal first caught wind, is John Legend and Chrissy Teigen’s somewhat unexpected purchase of a duplex penthouse loft in lower Manhattan’s trendy Nolita neighborhood that happens to be right next door to a single-level penthouse loft they acquired almost two years ago for a tiny bit more than $9 million.
The comfortably sophisticated duplex first popped up for sale in early September at $8.5 million, according to StreetEasy, but Legend and Teigen didn’t decide to take the plunge until more than a month after the price tag dropped to just under $8 million. (As of today, the exact sale price has not been revealed or recorded in tax records.) An effortless mix of classic loft details, i.e. 12-foot ceilings, exposed brick walls and cast iron Corinthian columns, and a bevy of modern conveniences, i.e. automated window shades and a multi-zone heating and cooling system, the roughly 3,500-square-foot urban aerie is configured with two bedrooms and two full and two half bathrooms.
A fireplace anchors one end of the vast combination living and dining space that stretches almost 50-feet from one end to the other. Several sets of French doors open to Juliet balconies and, at one end of the roller rink-sized space, there’s a sleek, open-plan kitchen as well as a giant walk-in pantry and, especially for Manhattan, an unusually spacious laundry room. Just off the living room, an ample guest suite is complete with walk-in closet and deluxe en suite facilities, while the even more luxe master retreat is tucked away upstairs along with a small office and a 600-plus-square-foot media lounge with another fireplace, this one between built-in bookshelves. A switchback staircase enhanced with an elaborately filigreed iron railing connects the two levels of the penthouse before it climbs up to an all-glass bulkhead that leads to an extensively landscaped roof deck. The more than 1,500-square-foot space offers an outdoor kitchen and wrap-around views of the surrounding rooftops.
The couple now presides over more than 6,000 square feet of living space with somewhere around 3,000 square feet of private rooftop terracing.
The Grammy hoovering crooner — his 2018 Emmy win made him a rare EGOT — and the fashion model turned popular Twitter provocateur — she also hosts “ Chrissy’s Court ,” a “Judge Judy” style courtroom reality series that premieres today on the freshly rolled out Quibi platform— previously owned another unit in the same Nolita building that they scooped up in 2012 for almost $2.5 million and sold over the summer of 2016 for not quite $4 million . Out west, where they previously lived in a snazzy Hollywood Hills home featured in Architectural Digest , the couple maintains a more than 8,500-square-foot contemporary mansion once owned by Rihanna and tucked up into the mountains above Beverly Hills, Calif., that they acquired in early 2016 for $14.1 million.
