Christy Mack set one condition for the move back to Manhattan. The townhouse had to be turnkey, ready to live in from day one. She'd raised three kids in Westchester County and wasn't going back to an apartment. Then her daughter walked her through a gutted carriage house on the Upper East Side. The stables were still inside. “It has great energy in it,” the daughter said, as Christy tells it. So they bought it.
That was 2009. John Mack was then chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley. The couple paid $13.5 million, by public records. Then came the renovation. Six years passed before the family could move in. The bare stables ended up as a 20-room home on six floors. More than a decade on, the Macks are leaving the city a second time. John stepped down as chairman in 2011. They're retiring to North Carolina, their home state.
The ask is $80 million. That makes it the priciest townhouse on the New York market, the Journal's Christopher Cameron reports. If it sells at that number, it would set a city record for a residential townhouse, says appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. The current record is $77.1 million, set in 2019 by a townhouse a hedge-fund manager sold.
Built for horses
The house runs about 16,000 square feet. Gilded Age architect C.P.H. Gilbert built it around 1902 for a banker who lived nearby. The later owners were famous New Yorkers. Otto Kahn, who built Oheka Castle. Stephen Carlton Clark, the Singer sewing-machine heir who founded the Baseball Hall of Fame. Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon, who sold it to the Macks. Part of it was still a garage then. Few carriage houses in the neighborhood still had their stables, says listing agent Mike Fabbri of the Agency. This was one of the last.
Architect Sawyer Berson and designer Eleanor B. LaSota kept what they could. The old transom windows, with chicken wire in the glass, now sit in the mudroom doors. The gym walls carry the house's old crackled tiles, sorted by hand. The ramps the horses once climbed turned out to be thick virgin chestnut. That wood now lines the lower walls. The rooms are bigger than a normal townhouse's. The first tenants were horses.
Our read
This is Retirement (M10) with a big Housing (M6) decision inside it. Two things stand out. First, the turnkey plan became a six-year project. The Macks could carry that. Most retirees can't carry two homes and a renovation for six years without touching savings. Second, the $80 million tells you nothing about a gain. The renovation bill isn't printed, and six years of work on a 16,000-square-foot house isn't cheap. Asking minus purchase is not profit. Morgan Stanley (MS) is held at weight in 16 books, nothing added.
Here's where it touches your plan. Many retirement plans include a move. Sell the big house, buy the smaller one, bank the difference. The Macks' story is the version where the smaller one needs work. This week, open your own plan to the housing line and look for two numbers. How many months the move takes, and what you'd live on while you carry both places. If those lines are blank, fill them in before you fall for a place with great energy. You want the umbrella packed before the first drop, and a move is a long walk in the open.