Brooke Astor's $46 M. Apartment (Briefly) Off The Market

In what must surely be the most sweepingly devastating tragedy of the week (in terms of Park Avenue real estate), the late Brooke Astor's salivated-over $46 million duplex at 778 Park Avenue has been taken off the market for the summer.

The listing is down from the Web site of Leighton Candler, the Corcoran broker who won the listing after five of the city’s top brokerages met in the co-op's library, where the floor-to-ceiling bookcases have 10 coats of scarlet lacquer.

"We’re doing just a few things to the apartment during the summer work period," said Mr. Candler. "We’re making a few minor alterations to the apartment--we’re raising a ceiling that had been lowered in the entrance hall, because, you know, it needed to be done." (Curtains will be taken down and cleaned; some French doors will be replaced, too.)

The listing will come back on after Labor Day, which makes sense considering that the type of house-hunter interested in an apartment with the words "private landing" and "vault" literally written onto the floor plan is probably off on beaches with hard-to-pronounce names until then.

Still, it'll be a sad few weeks for real estate obsessives. There aren't many co-ops on the market with a wet bar in the 30-foot-long gallery; or with terraces off two bedrooms, the sitting room, the dining room, and two off the library; or with 22 closets (not counting a dressing room).