Fashionable digs: Clothier’s UES mansion asks $42M

A 30-foot-wide townhouse that was home to Bernard and Josephine Chaus, founders of a women’s fashion line, has hit the market for $42 million.

Asking $4,640 per square foot, the four-story house at 128 East 73rd Street is notable for its grand scale. Measuring 9,050 square feet, the home is 30 feet wide and has a 35-foot deep garden. Paula Del Nunzio and Brown Harris Stevens and Serena Boardman at Sotheby’s International Realty have the listing.

The home, with seven bedrooms, two kitchens and a library, belonged to the late Bernard and Josephine Chaus, co-founders of the fashion firm Bernard Chaus, who purchased the home for an unknown sum in 1987, according to public records. Bernard Chaus died in 1991, leaving Josephine to become one of the first female CEOs of a public company. Josephine died this past November.

Manhattan’s townhouse market broke a 10-year price record in 2015, according to a report released today by Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel. The median sales price jumped to $5.3 million in 2015, a 28 percent jump from 2014 and 94.4 percent higher than 2006’s median price of $2.7 million.

While 128 East 73rd is not the priciest townhouse on the market – that distinction belongs to the Safra family’s three townhomes at 12-16 East 82nd Street, which are being marketed for a combined $120 million – it’s certainly up there.

The second-priciest townhouse in Manhattan, at 24 East 81st Street, is asking $50 million, a discount from the original asking price of $63 million.

The priciest townhouse ever sold? The Harkness Mansion at 4 East 75th Street, which sold for $53 million in 2006. [Observer] – E.B. Solomont