Actor Antonio Banderas is looking to sell a gem of an apartment in Manhattan. The unit is situated in The Prasada, a pre-WWI building in Lincoln Square within easy walking distance of the Metropolitan Opera. Banderas purchased the property with now ex-wife Melanie Griffith; the couple paid just shy of $4 million for it. Banderas, now the sole owner, has listed it for $7.95 million.
The Prasada, an elder statesman among high-end Manhattan residential buildings, dates to 1907. It features a limestone exterior heavily ornamented in the Beaux-Arts style. There are currently forty units across twelve stories in the co-op building.
The combination single-floor unit was converted from two existing apartments before Banderas and Griffith took ownership. In its current iteration, it is a four-and-four with original oak chevron floors, a pair of fireplaces, 11’ ceilings, and picture windows to take full advantage of the park-side location of the apartment.
The design sensibility is quite pleasing, and the kitchen manages to whip period, late 20th century modern art, cottage, and literate into a tasteful whole that doesn’t, somehow, come across as stylistically cluttered or neurotically inclusive. The octagonal foyer with raised vermilion ceiling expresses some joie de vivre, but the dining room is an exercise in high-drama, and the high-gloss black walls and exposed beams are moody enough to give Eugene O’Neill a healthy appetite.
Banderas’ recent film roles include the lead in 2016’s lilting ‘Altamira’; ‘Life Itself,’ an Amazon Studios production directed by Dan Fogelman and co-starring Banderas, will be in theaters later this year.
