Vincent Gallo Buys Trump Tower Condo at Heavy Discount in All Cash Deal
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Vincent Gallo, one of Hollywood’s more enigmatic and eccentric if semi-retired ducks, who caused a scandal at Cannes with “The Brown Bunny” in 2003 and hasn’t been seen on the silver screen in more than five years, has paid just under $1.5 million — in cash — for a one-bedroom and 1.5-bathroom condominium on a high floor of New York City’s Trump Tower. Gallo, a savvy real estate and architecture aficionado who makes no secret of his support for the building’s president owner, Donald Trump, told the New York Post he “could smell a slowdown in the market” and, without even touring the apartment personally, made a “lowball” offer with “no conditions and no contingencies” for the almost 1,100 sq. ft. unit that had languished on the market for more than three years with asking prices as unrealistically high as $3.4 million. Gallo, who ran away to New York as a teenager, recounted his awe of the building as it was built, a glistening phoenix that rose out of the blight of 1970s New York. He went to say he thinks Trump Tower is “the best building in New York,” which will no doubt please the resident president, and that this “was the best real estate deal” he’s made in a long time.
The front door opens efficiently if inelegantly directly into a 30-foot-long combination living/dining room stripped of almost all architectural detailing with basic parquet floors and two humongous floor-to-ceiling windows that provide up-close views of the surrounding towers and an inarguably spectacular, bird’s eye view down Fifth Avenue toward and beyond the Empire State Building. A short corridor with an itty-bitty coat closet and a convenient, nice-to-have powder room leads to a compact kitchen that does not benefit from a single window. With the same, cloud-walker views as the living room, the master bedroom includes two closets, one of them a walk-in almost as big as the kitchen, and a sizable bathroom with a bidet but without a window. The unit was listed with Leonel Piraino and Rafael Salas of Brown Harris Stevens.
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While pets are forbidden, residents of the gold-trimmed black-glass high-rise pay hefty fees — Gallo’s unit traded with monthly common charges of nearly $1,900 plus almost $2,200 in monthly taxes — that provide them with a discreet lobby apart from the glitzy, triple-height atrium where Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015. There are full-time doormen, valet and concierge services and, because some rich people can’t be bothered to push a button or two, elevator operators.
Well known for his penchant for architecturally significant homes, the iconoclast filmmaker, musician, artist and dedicated provocateur is no stranger to property gossip columns. He once owned maverick architect John Lautner’s exotic Wolff Residence that’s snuggled dramatically into a steep hillside above the Sunset Strip; In 2005 he paid $2 million for David Geffen’s former duplex condo at the illustrious Sierra Towers complex in West Hollywood that he lucratively flipped the following year for $3 million to Cher, who in turn sold it in 2013 for $5.25 million to billionaire Vitasoy heiress Karen Lo; And, last year Gallo surmised Tucson, Ariz., was a good real estate bet and splashed out $3.25 million for a thrillingly cantilevered, Rick Joy-designed ultra-contemporary masterpiece with cinematic desert and city lights views.
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