An Upper East Side townhouse once home to actress Brooke Shields, an Oscar-nominated composer and the other wife of a Miami playboy will soon make way for a new condo development, The Real Deal has learned.
Developer Michael Paul Enterprises scooped up the property at 165 East 62nd Street and the neighboring building at 163 East 62nd Street for a combined $14.05 million, and plans to raze both to make way for new development. The new building will feature five full-floor condominiums totaling 13,000 square feet.
Joseph Ash of Luxury Property Group represented Michael Paul in both transactions. Halstead’s Barbara Wilson represented the unnamed seller of 163 East 62nd Street, while Brian Manning and Timothy Schneider of Brown Harris Stevens represented the seller of 165 East 62nd Street, Anne Roome.
George Barrie, long-serving head of cosmetics brand Faberge Inc. and a composer twice nominated for the Oscar for best original song, bought 163 East 62nd Street in 1980, according to public records. Two years later, he sold it to actress Brooke Shields, who was listed as its owner for the following 16 years.
In 1998, Shields sold the house to Philip Roome – a Palm Beach socialite and friend of her father – and his wife Anne. It soon turned out that Anne wasn’t Roome’s only wife.
In 2003, Roome, who suffered from manic depression, committed suicide by jumping out of the 30th floor of His Park Avenue office. In the aftermath of his death, Anne discovered that Philip had a second wife in Palm Beach, Liza Pulitzer. Neither wife knew about the other – a drama that spawned a lengthy feature in New York Magazine.
The article describes Anne Roome “sitting in the parlor room of Her East 62nd Street townhouse, with its hand-carved wooden staircase, black-and-white marble floors, and Picasso drawings mixed with her own artwork—including a painting of her mother, “Potsie”—in a Lilly Pulitzer dress.”