After a little less than two months on the market, Ron Howard and his wife Cheryl have dropped the price on their New York pied-a-terre by a flat seven figures. It had been listed with an initial asking price of $12.5 million, and is now asking $11.5 million.
Located in the Eldorado building on Central Park West, the apartment features views of the city, the Hudson and Central Park. Howard purchased the property in 2004 for about $5.5 million.
The apartment measures about 3,000 square feet, and contains three bedrooms, all en-suite, including a master on the southeast corner of the 26th floor. The Eldorado was constructed in the early 1930’s, and overlooks central park. It was designed by Emery Roth, whose list of iconic New York buildings is as long as your arm.
Featuring a nice sense of flow, but still retaining some of the more compartmental design elements of the period, the unit’s layout is strongly of the era. The apartment contains a library, a butler’s pantry, and a private elevator.
Throughout the residence, the mood is relaxed, and there is a noticeable and self-conscious lack of a cohesive design vision, and the feeling of rigidity that may accompany it. There are quite a few competing textures in the apartment, and the amalgam contributes visual appeal and elicits some curiosity, but the spaces don’t take too many chances. The interior can come off as a little formal, and the balance between modern renovation and antiquated charm doesn’t always work as well as it should. But the unit is warm, cosmopolitan, restrained, and very comfortable.
Apart from last year’s box-office smash ‘Inferno,’ adapted from Dan Brown’s hodgepodge of the same name, Howard took a stab at Melvillean mythos in 2015’s ‘In the Heart of the Sea,’ a look at a source which informed the great novel ‘Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale.’ He took home an Academy Award for 2001’s ‘A Beautiful Mind.’
