Photographer Mirabelle Marden, the former owner of the Lower East Side’s Rivington Arms gallery and the daughter of minimalist artist and downtown “quasi-aristocrat” Brice Marden, is trading her native West Village for the still-undeveloped waterfront in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn.
The socialite snapper purchased a turn of the century carriage house at 17 Dikeman Street for $1.55 million, or $775 per square foot, the highest price ever spent for a residential property per square foot in the neighborhood, listing broker Eva Zurek of the Corcoran Group said. The sale, which hit public records today, closed April 19.
“[Marden] was always coming here so she wanted to be here full-time,” Zurek said of Marden, whose mother is painter Helen Harrington. “She has a group of friends here and she felt this was her community.”
Marden opened the trendy Rivington Arms gallery, ultimately situated at 4 East 2nd Street, in 2001. It reportedly helped launch the careers of artists Dash Snow and Dan Colen, but closed in early 2009 because of creative differences between the gallery’s founders, Marden and Melissa Bent. Marden, who later traveled the world, is now settling in Brooklyn. Bent is reportedly living in Boston.
The 2,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bathroom carriage house, at the corner of Otsega Street, features 9.5-foot ceilings, dining and living rooms and a landscaped garden with a Brazilian teak deck.
Prudential Douglas Elliman agent Steve Halprin represented Marden in the deal. Neither Halprin nor his client was immediately available for comment.
Former owner Thomas Warnke, a German architect, bought the 1989 home for $760,000 in 2008 via Craigslist, according to a story in the New York Times.
He sold it, Zurek said, because “he wasn’t attached to the property and felt it was time to move on.”
It was not immediately clear where Warnke was moving.