Diandra Douglas Lists Manhattan Townhouse (EXCLUSIVE)
Diandra Douglas, the cosmopolitan first wife of Michael Douglas, has put her swanky townhouse on a plum block of New York City’s Upper East Side up for sale at almost $20 million. The daughter of a Swiss-American diplomat and divorced from Douglas in 2000 after 23 years of marriage, the accomplished equestrian acquired the Beaux-Arts style townhouse while married to her entrepreneur second ex-husband Michael Klein almost a dozen years ago for $15.25 million. Standing five stories above ground with a fully finished basement and impeccably restored and updated in high style by deft architect Campion Platt with electronic window treatments and a comprehensive sound system, the opulently appointed, elevator-equipped residence offers five family bedrooms, plus two staff bedrooms and a staff kitchen tucked down into the basement, and a total of 5.5 bathrooms in roughly 8,000 square feet.
A modest, secured entry vestibule gives way to an opulent yet austere ground floor foyer with a gleaming white marble floor and a floor-to-ceiling mirrored panel over which flows a paper-thin sheet of water. A white marble staircase with Lucite handrail grandly ascends to baronial formal living and dining rooms, the former with a diamond-shaped pink glass chandelier and French doors to a balcony overlooking the street, the latter furnished with little more than a rustic, live-edge dining table and both with bleached white oak herringbone pattern hardwood floors and minimalistic fluted white onyx fireplaces.
A third-floor library with zebra wood accents and leather wall panels does double duty as a soignée media lounge with a backlit onyx bar and an integrated projector system while the sleekly outfitted and expensively equipped kitchen is hidden behind the foyer on the ground floor with white lacquered cabinetry and a center island topped by a bespoke slab of bottle green glass. An adjoining breakfast room has built-in banquette seating and a double-sided fireplace shared with an outdoor living area.
In addition to a third floor guest suite so spacious and sumptuous guests won’t want to leave, there are three guest or family bedrooms on the top floor, two much smaller than the third, while the master suite occupies the entire fourth floor and comprises a fireplace warmed bedroom wrapped in shimmery silver leaf wallpaper, a long, wardrobe-lined dressing hall plus a bi-level dressing room that would make any fashionista faint with envy and a lavish bathroom replete with radiant heated travertine flooring and a refrigerated cosmetics cabinet.
No stranger to living high on the hog with a refined sense of taste, Douglas once owned La Quinta, a jaw-dropping spread of almost 7.5 acres in the ritzy seaside community of Montecito, Calif., that she sold in 2013 a for $15.9 million, almost half the original $29 million price tag. And, despite a not always amicable post-divorce relationship, she and her two-time Oscar-winning first ex-husband have long co-owned an almost 250-acre, village-like compound sequestered in the hills near the town of Valldemossa on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca they bought as a married couple in 1989 and have had for sale on an off for a handful of years at prices that started at about $61 million and dropped to roughly $45 million before it was taken off the market sometime in 2018. Once owned by the Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria, the Moorish estate is known as S’Estaca and has a total of ten bedrooms across several buildings including a main house overlooking the sea and several guesthouses. The property, which has reportedly hosted a slew of Hollywood luminaries such as Tom Cruise, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson, also includes a swimming pool and pool house set amid manicured gardens, several acres of terraced vineyards and an organic kitchen garden where, as of late 2018, a scarecrow that depicts Donald Trump keeps the crows away.
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