Zoe Wetherall
The double-townhouse residence of the late jet-setting couple Mica and Ahmet Ertegun has sold for $9.3 million, Gimme Shelter has learned. The proceeds of the sale, at 121-125 E. 81st., went to their charity, said brokers involved in the deal.
The home was asking $12.9 million.
Mica, a noted interior designer who fled Romania after the Communists came to power and imprisoned her father, died last December at age 97. Ahmet, who died in 2006 at age 83 following a brain injury, was the co-founder of Atlantic Records. He steered the careers of talents from Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones; Mica’s clients included finance figures like Sandy Weill and rock stars like Keith Richards.
The couple had homes in New York City, Southampton, Paris and Bodrum — a coastal city in Ahmet’s native Turkey.
The sale comes just in advance of a highly anticipated auction that focuses on Mica. In November, Christie’s will auction her collections of jewelry and art — including a René Magritte painting estimated to fetch more than $95 million.
Ahmet was Mica’s second husband. She first married at age 16 to a Romanian aristocrat who was 15 years older. They fled Romania with the country’s royal family and went first to Switzerland, then Paris, where Mica modeled, and then to Canada — where Mica collected and packed eggs on a Lake Ontario chicken farm before getting a divorce and marrying Ahmet.
During their 45-year marriage, the Erteguns were known for hosting fabulous parties where worlds of art, politics, music and more would collide — even as Ahmet’s love affairs outside the marriage were an open secret.
“I never minded, because I knew it wasn’t against me,” she once said. “I knew I was the best thing in his life.”
The five-story, five-bedroom, 8½-bathroom home is 37 feet wide. It was originally built in 1899.
The two homes are conjoined at the third and fourth floors, and feature 20 rooms all together, although they remain on two separate tax lots. The current configuration includes a separate duplex office unit, zoned commercial, on the ground and parlor floors of 125 E. 81st St.
Neither townhouse is landmarked.
The listing brokers were Leslie J. Garfield’s Lydia Rosengarten and Jed Garfield and Douglas Elliman’s Lauren Muss.