Tina Fey Gets All Uptown

BUYER: Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond
LOCATION: West End Avenue, New York, NY
PRICE: $3,400,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Huge and gracious family home in premier full service pre-war coop....Private elevator landing leads to rooms of enormous proportions, 4 master bedrooms plus maid's room, eat-in kitchen, 20 x 19 dining room, 27.5 x 18.5 living room with WBFP and a peek of the river, plus library and 4.5 bathrooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a gentleman we call The Legal Eagle, we were recently directed to a short story on the notoriously naughty Gawker website that reports six time Emmy winning writer/actress/comedienne Miss Tina Fey and her composer huzband Jeff Richmond dropped $3,400,000 for new digs on the Upper West Side of New York City.

Ever Miss Tina Fey became the head writer at Saturday Night Live in 1999, she's been comedic catnip. She co-hosted Weekend Update on SNL, wrote and starred in the movie Mean Girls, got herself a damn fine tee-vee show called 30 Rock, yes she did, and starred in a not very funny movie called Baby Mama with the usually very funny Amy Poehler. But her star turn, the bit that made Miss Tina Fey a household name, was her blistering, spot-on spoofs of former Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin which even the right wingers of America have to admit were dee-lishus.

Located on West End Avenue, Miss Tina Fey's new spread, according to listing information, includes a private elevator landing, a central entrance hall, a dignified 27 and a half foot long corner living room with a working wood burning fireplace and a peekaboo view of the mighty Hudson River, and a dining room large enough that she could comfortably host a weenie roast for the the entire cast of 30 Rock.

Listing information shows the half floor sprawler was first listed nearly a year ago with an asking price of $4,100,000. The Gawker guys and gals divulged that the purchase price is $3,400,000. Given that property records for the unit have yet to clear the interweb location(s) Your Mama uses to check these things, we can't yet confirm or deny whether that purchase price is accurate.

Listing information indicates the apartment, which has windows on all four sides, includes 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. Our beady little eyes count three principal bedrooms, each with a private pooper, and a fourth room that can be used as a family bedroom or a staff room or maybe a Pilates room since that form of exercise torture is so popular. The fourth (bed)room does not appear to have a direct connection to a terlit, but a full bathroom is accessible off a small room behind the kitchen. A powder room just off the foyer ensures Miss Tina Fey's guest will not need to enter the family's private quarters in order to do their pre-dinner coke snorting and/or after dinner dirty bizness.

Listing information also shows a 17+ foot long library, a kitchen with a large butler's pantry and the master bedroom features a large dressing room and a second non-functioning wood burning fireplace. The apartment is described in listing information as in "estate condition" which in real estate speak usually means some old person has been living up in there for a long time and that the apartment is in desperate need of a smart architect and a nice gay decorator to bring the place up to snuff.

If we were Miss Tina Fey, which obviously we are not, we'd just knock out that fourth (bed)room and bathroom–who really wants their household staff living up in their bizness anymore?–and open the space up to be a good sized family room. At the same time, we'd add a proper laundry room and convert the powder room to a full sized lavatory with a stand up shower.

We'd also recommend making some traffic flow changes to the master bedroom suite which would include closing off the door to the shared bathroom with the adjacent bedroom, moving the entrance to the room a few feet towards the front of the apartment, combining the small closet with the large walk-in from the adjacent bedroom, add a closet to the adjacent bedroom and then enlarge the bathroom by making the dressing room smaller. The plan still needs tweaking and the details need working out, but this is just a few apples to ponder about reworking the place.
According to CityFile and confirmed with property records, Miss Tina Fey and her man-mate Mister Richmond continue to own an 1,873 square foot apartment at 500 West End Avenue which they bought in early 2005 for $1,900,000 as well as a 659 square foot place on W. 85th Street they picked up in May of 2006 for $550,000 and reportedly use as an office.

The apartment is located in the same building where the fine boned musician/actor/activist Harry Belafonte famously combined two apartments into one sprawling and not particularly well feng shui-ed apartment. Mister Belafonte sold the 18-room spread in October of 2006 for $10,750,000 to Micky Mouse heiress Abigail Disney for $13.75M who quickly flipped the bitch back on the market with an asking price of $13,750,000 after deciding she didn't want to take on such a large residential renovation project after all. If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand-million times, rich and famous folks can be so damn fickle with their real estate choices. Miz Disny had a devil of a time selling her never occupied apartment but according to Josh Barbanel at the New York Times, she recently signed sales contracts but had to split the joined apartment back into two separate units to be sold to two different buyers. For anyone who cares, Miz Disney and her huzband Pierre Hauser forked over 12 and some million clams for an apartment at the newly converted 15 Madison Square North building.