Update: Joan Rivers' Marie Antoinette penthouse isn't good enough for Saudi prince, who's 'ripping it to shreds'
Update, Aug. 26, 2015: Turns out Mideast royalty isn't necessarily a fan of French royalty. Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Fahd is the previously unidentified "Middle Eastern royalty" who bought Joan Rivers' palatial penthouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and he is "ripping it to shreds," according to the Daily Mail's sources. One person says neighbors are "shocked." The New York Post hears much the same: The prince brought in an architect and designers as soon as he took possession of the apartment, the Post says, and now neighbors are on edge, "worried about not only the disruption of construction, but the prospect of big entourages and gun-toting bodyguards." The building is a co-op, though, so presumably he'll need their, well, cooperation.
"Joan sure did love her condo -- it was her palace, and she felt like the queen there. So it's pretty surreal that a real-life king is moving in now," the Daily Mail's source said. "The Queen of Comedy left, and the Prince of the Desert moved in. It's a lot for the neighbors to take in, because there is usually not a lot of movement in that building."
He reportedly wants a private elevator installed -- in addition to the communal elevator already in place. The unit is to be occupied only a couple of months a year; it's a pied-a-terre for his sons and their families, the Daily Mail was told.
It took oh, about six years, but Joan Rivers' truly palatial Manhattan penthouse -- the one she personally decorated to be "how Marie Antoinette would have lived, if she'd had the money" -- sold for its full asking price of $28 million. Fittingly, the buyers are "Middle Eastern royalty."
The comedian bought the home in 1988 and lived there until her death in September of last year, as we reported when it hit the market earlier this year.
She'd listed it in 2009 and then again in 2012-2013 but apparently wasn't terribly serious about it; she'd told the New York Times that she just wanted to "placate my business manager" and that any buyer would "have to come in with a bag full of money, otherwise we're not going to do it."
Rivers' daughter, Melissa, took over her late mother's affairs and relisted the penthouse at 1 East 62nd Street in February. Despite its earlier trouble selling -- and in defiance of one expert's 2012 prediction that any serious listing effort would require someone to "get a decorator in there and make it sort of bland,” because "people have no imagination, and to get past Joan Rivers’s stuff, you’ve got to have a lot of imagination" -- the penthouse this time around attracted multiple offers and is thought to have sold for all cash.
The home clocks in at about 5,000 square feet and occupies the top three floors of a seven-story mansion built in 1903. The building was converted to condos in the 1930s.
Rivers' unit has four bedrooms and five bathrooms plus a two-bedroom guest apartment. There are two terraces, one of them overlooking Central Park.
Her private office included a cheetah rug and pillows embroidered with homilies ("Life is uncertain, eat dessert first") and her own coinage: "Don't expect praise without envy--until you're dead."
Also on Yahoo Homes:
• $135M is asking price for estate owned by ... Danny Thomas?! (21 photos)
• Neil Young adds getaway to Hawaii's $20M-plus club (25 photos)
• Giudice mansion headed for foreclosure, beach house bombs at auction (51 photos)
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