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Doctor’s townhouse returns to market with $15M asking price
Other listings to hit the market are a $20,000-per-month rental at the Corner and the penthouses at Cary Tamarkin’s 456 West 19th Street
An Upper West Side brownstone belonging to anesthesiologist and spine specialist Dr. Richard Kaul has returned to the market, this time with a higher price. The house was last listed in the summer of 2009 at $14 million, dropping its price to $10 million before being taken off the market.
It’s now listed with Brigitte Ouakrat of Charles Rutenberg Realty for $15 million.
Kaul has something of an checkered past, having been found guilty of negligent manslaughter in connection with the 1999 death of a patient in England. Now practicing in New Jersey, he bought the seven-story brownstone at 69 West 83rd Street, between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, in 2005 for $3.6 million.
The four-bedroom, Queen Anne-style house was built at the end of the 19th century. Ouakrat declined to discuss the seller other than to say that the house has been extensively renovated, and additional improvements, like new windows, had been made to the house since it was last on the market.
The home has a wine cellar that is “hand-dug” into the earth so “you keep your bottles at the natural temperature,” she said.
A two-story back garden is accessed through the kitchen and downstairs media room. A wall in the dining room — one of the only original walls left in the home — shows off the original brick.
There are nine wood-burning and gas fireplaces in the house, Ouakrat said, including one in the master bathroom. Each of the stones in the fireplaces has been removed, cleaned and put back in place, she said.
The seventh floor has its own kitchen and two terraces, one facing north and one facing south, and an outdoor shower.
Kaul is now the head of New Jersey Spine & Rehabilitation, but he attended medical school at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London, England. In 2001, it was widely reported in British newspapers that Kaul was found guilty of manslaughter in England after the death of a patient who was put under anesthesia to get a tooth removed.
The BBC, which referred to Kaul in 2001 as the “Dental Death Doctor,” reported that witnesses said he was talking on his mobile phone while the patient had a fatal heart attack. Kaul’s license to practice medicine in England was revoked after he admitted that his inattention led to her death.
After the conviction, Kaul moved to New Jersey, where he had been licensed to practice medicine since 1996 after completing his residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The British case was reviewed by the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners, which determined that the incident was a mistake and unlikely to be repeated. Kaul’s license is now active after being suspended from December 2003 to June 2004, according to the Board of Medical Examiners’ website, and he was ordered to take an ethics course and pay a $10,000 penalty.
Kaul did not respond to requests for comment.
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Apartment 15E at the Corner, a new rental tower at 200 West 72nd Street, does much to accentuate the angled shape that the building is named for.
The three-bedroom apartment, which recently hit the market with a $20,000-per-month rent, boasts a 1,000-square-foot set-back terrace that wraps around the front of the building, helping to create the distinctive look of the 19-story tower.
“It’s actually on the corner of the Corner,” said Carole Bloom, leasing manager at the building. Located at 72nd Street and Broadway, it is being developed by the Gotham Organization, in a joint venture with Philips International and Rhodes NY.
What that means for the eventual renter, she said, is views from several different angles.
“You really can see four exposures,” she said: Central Park, the Hudson River, down Broadway towards Columbus Circle and uptown towards the Apple Bank Building.
“Most terraces of that size and expanse are on the roof of the building,” she added. “It’s one of those apartments that just doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
While leasing at the Corner has been going on for months, the three-bedroom units there have just gone on the market. The project is around 85 percent leased, Bloom said.
The apartment itself is around 1,600 square feet. The master bedroom has a personal recessed safe for storing valuables. The other two bedrooms are in a separate wing, and they have their own entrance to the terrace.
The building’s energy-efficient windows come with solar shades already in place, Bloom said. Kitchens have a wine cooler, full-length pantry and a Liebherr refrigerator with French doors.
In the Andres Escobar-designed lobby, a 1,754-crystal chandelier hangs overhead. A glass-walled “decompression” room, leading from the front lobby to the elevator bank, is supposed to help residents relax as they enter the building. A Trader Joe’s on the ground floor opened this week. And of course, there’s the 12-foot “mist wall” on the roof for summer cool-downs.
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The penthouses at Cary Tamarkin’s 22-unit 456 West 19th Street are now completed and on the market.
Penthouse J, a 10th- and 11th-floor duplex with a private roof terrace, is on the market for $7.8 million, according to Tamarkin, a developer and architect. Penthouse H, on the eighth and ninth floors, is priced at $7.5 million. Two other penthouses are on the market for $6.5 million and $6.25 million. The building, located just off 10th Avenue, overlooks the Highline.
The building is wrapped in undulating steel meant to suggest the waves in the nearby Hudson River, Tamarkin said. The penthouses sit atop the rest of the building, which is a more traditional rectangular shape.
“I was interested in the way the two forms mixed with each other,” he said.
Still, while the balconies are ribbon-shaped, the rooms are square, he noted, making for easier decorating.
The penthouses have double-height living rooms and “big walls for art,” he said. “They’re very cool, graciously scaled apartments.
There are a total of six units left for sale in the building, including four penthouses, he said.