Serena Boardman
$35 M. Park Avenue Mansion Goes to Contract After 19-Year Sales Odyssey
In June 1989, the month that the Ayatollah Khomeini died, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos were removed from the Corcoran Gallery and protestors were massacred in Tiananmen Square, the developer Sherman Cohen paid a then epic $12.5 million for the neo-federal, Tuscan-columned, 100-foot-wide, 20-foot-deep, 25-room mansion at 603 Park Avenue as a surprise for his wife.
She didn’t like it.
So Mr. Cohen put the house back on the market, where it stayed, on and off, for nearly 20 years. Around May 21, the press-shy broker and socialite Serena Boardman (her great-great-grandfather was George F. Baker, who founded what later became Citibank) and her Sotheby’s colleague Leila Stone put the house back on the market after a lull for $35 million. read more »
