Vincent D'Onofrio's Den

SELLER: Vincent D'Onofrio
LOCATION: Christodora House, 143 Avenue B, NYC
PRICE: $2,600,000 (combined sale price)
SIZE: 1,905 square feet (combined), 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (combined)
DESCRIPTION: Incredible opportunity to create the most gorgeous 3 bedroom combination apartment with direct Park, City, and Empire State Building Views from 12 windows, at the celebrated Christodora House, an incredible Landmark Pre-war Condominium.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in the day, Your Mama would have eaten glass and/or tortured your children to live in the Christodora House. As it turns out, it was Your Mama's Doctor Cooter who had the pleasure of living up on the 9th floor of this building back in the late 1980s before the East Village became infested with bankers and nannies.

One of the first doorman buildings in the East Village and fronting the once squalid and fruit-cake filled Tompkins Square Park, Christodora House has long been a relatively expensive and elegant oasis in a sea of drugs, pitt bulls, and homeless folks. Of course, the last few years have seen the East Village turn into the Upper West Side, but that's another sad, sad story.

The building, originally built as a settlement house for the poor and converted to luxury condominiums in 1986, has a long history of celebrity dwellers including the notorious Iggy Pop. Currently, there are loads of successful arty farty types who maintain residences here such as photoreaslism painter Richard Estes and photographer/model Sigrid Rothe, but it appears Mr. D'Onofrio was the last of the real deal celebrities living up in this building.

Surely all the children are familiar with Mr. D'onofrio's freakily intense character on that obscenely ubiquitous Law and Order Criminal Intent program. This damn program is playing on at least two channels ev-er-ee time Your Mama turns on the boob-tube. There are times, when our medications aren't quite correct, that Your Mama gets to believing all these Law and Order shows constitute a sick collaboration between the entertainment industry and the government. Are they trying to scare the bejeesus out of us with all those shows about sexually abusing mommies and psychotic serial killers living next door? Or are they trying to scare the Jesus into us?

And to make matters worse, this program regularly films out front of Your Mama's building in New York. So we have got to be regularly living with their trailers, electric cables, hot lights and bossy production assistants who think because they are holding a clip board and have a walkie-talkie strapped to their head they own the street. Hunnies, one day Your Mama is going to haul off and and smack one of these assholes when they tell us to "please go around," or instruct us as to where it's okay for our bitches Linda and Beverly to do their durty bizness.

Anyhoo, Your Mama digresses. Public records show the famously five-o'clock shadowed Mister D'Onofrio and the unfortunately surnamed wifey Catherine van der Donk purchased the two fifth floor apartments at Christodora House in 1998. Some insiders say their intention was to combine the two apartments, but for one reason or another, this never happened.

The listing, presented by Citi-Habitats' Danny Davis, describes one apartment as a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom and the second as a 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom. However a quick look at the floor plan does not show a second bedroom or a second full bathroom in the larger apartment.

We're not sure what the story is with that. However, as all the children can see with extreme envy in their hearts, the larger of the two apartments contains a baronial sized living room with the original paneling and massive fireplace. Mister Davis was somewhat miserly with the photographs so we're just going to have to use our imaginations when thinking about what this impressive room actually looks like.

The listing agent suggests these apartments could easily be combined into a sprawling 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom apartment with 50 feet on the park. If any of our architect readers out there would like to give a crack at re-designing the layout of this apartment, Your Mama would be happy to post the winning design and then forward it on to the new owner.

The D'Onofrio apartments were being offered separately and together. The combined asking price was $2,395,000. According to Mister Max Abelson, they were both purchased by the same buyer for $2,600,000, which indicates to Your Mama there were multiple bids.

No word on where the D'Onofrios might be moving, but we do have a mutual friend in common who is also in the television bizness who recently sold off their East Village townhouse and moved West to Los Angeles. Perhaps their move marks the beginning of a westward trend. Although with Law and Order still filming at an alarming pace, we don't expect this couple to relocate to Los Angeles any time soon. But, perhaps they are considering life after Law and Order (if there is such a thing) and know something about that time frame we don't.

Sources: NY Observer, Citi-Habitats