UES mansion tied to fashion legend lists for $65M

After decades of lawsuits, an Upper East Side mansion tied to a late fashion icon, his secret wife and her sister is up for sale.  

The sprawling townhouse at 15 East 63rd Street, once the site of Oleg Cassini’s design studio, hit the market on Monday, asking $65 million. 

Cassini, who died in 2006 at the age of 92, made his name styling Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis  when she was first lady and romancing famous actresses like Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Anita Ekberg. 

Marianne Nestor Cassini, and her sister, Peggy Nestor, have owned the landmarked property since 1984, though Nestor Cassini said the home has belonged solely to her sister since 2018. Nestor and her family currently live in the building. 

(The designer and Nestor Cassini married in London in 1971, but she only announced their union after his death.) 

The Gilded Age home — built in 1901 by financier and philanthropist Elias Asiel — is 25 feet wide, spans 18,000 square feet and has seven bedrooms and more than eight bathrooms. It also features three terraces, 14 fireplaces and a white marble foyer with a curved staircase. 

The townhouse was a seven-unit apartment building when the pair bought it. The property’s current configuration as a single home or multiple units is unclear. 

The home’s layout could threaten its chances at hitting the asking price, which would place it in good company with other properties on the block that have traded in discounted deals. 

A 25-foot-wide townhouse at 12 East 63rd Street closed in 2022 for $56 million — nearly $20 million less than its asking price when it first listed in 2015. A property of the same width at 8 East 63rd Street snagged a contract in January after lowering its asking price from $35 million in 2019 to $28 million. The deal closed for $21 million on March 14.

“Anyone who purchases this is going to rip it apart,” said Matthew Lesser, a broker specializing in townhouse sales with Leslie J. Garfield. The sisters tapped Lesser and Jed Garfield to sell the property in 2019, though it was ultimately never listed. 

Louise Beit of Sotheby’s International, the listing broker, declined to comment. 

The trouble on 63rd Street

The property narrowly avoided foreclosure last year, when Cassini’s sister-in-law, Peggy Nestor, filed for bankruptcy just one day before the scheduled sale. 

But the six-story abode has starred in multiple contentious legal battles over the last three decades.

Before moving to keep the property, the Nestor sisters fought for 30 years to evict interior designer Thomas Britt — who’d lived in the building since the 1970s — so the two could convert the property into a single-family home. Britt finally agreed to move out in 2018. 

“We could hear the cheers through the door,” his attorney told the New York Post after Britt’s assistant returned his keys. 

Before the two could offload the property, one of the home’s mortgage lenders filed a foreclosure action against the sisters, the estate of Cassini’s daughter Christina and two Nassau County officials. The lender, Florida-based Lynx Asset Services, claimed Nestor Cassini missed three monthly payments totaling more than $270,000. 

A judge sided with the lenders and set the foreclosure sale for April 26, 2023 — but the decision never materialized after Nestor filed for bankruptcy the day before. 

At the time of the sale’s scheduling, the sisters owed more than $17 million in missed mortgage payments plus interests and fees. 

The sale of the townhouse is included in Nestor’s bankruptcy plan, which may also allow her to refinance the debt or develop alternate plans for repayment depending on the judge’s determination, according to an attorney for Nestor. 

Nestor claims her sister granted her full ownership of the property, though a deed certifying her status was never filed, according to an adversary proceeding filed in conjunction with the Chapter 11 action. 

In the adversary complaint, Nestor claimed she invested at least $5 million in converting the rent stabilized apartment building into her home and spent a total of $25 million on the maintenance and renovation of the building. 

If the townhouse sells during the course of Nestor’s bankruptcy proceedings, she could avoid paying transfer taxes on the deal, which range from 1 percent to 2.6 percent in New York City.

The issues over the 63rd Street property has played out over a larger inheritance battle with Nestor Cassini’s late husband’s heirs over his $50 million fortune. (The designer married actress Gene Tierney and the couple had two daughters before divorcing in 1952.) Nestor Cassini was arrested in 2018 on her way to the opera in Manhattan after refusing to comply with court orders. 

Elsewhere in New York, Cassini’s Gramercy Park townhouse was foreclosed upon and sold at auction in 2022 for $5 million. The Gothic home at 135 East 19th Street is on the market for just under $14 million. 

Nestor Cassini sued officials in Nassau County, where the late designer owned a mansion in Oyster Bay, over auctions that moved pieces of his estate.  She alleged they were trying to “shamefully loot her late husband’s estate,” according to the complaint. The lawsuit, which seeks $350 million in damages, is pending.

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