An Upper East Side mansion has just sold for a record setting $79.5 million, according to city property records.
The 41-foot-wide limestone townhouse at 19 East 64th Street served as the Wildenstein family art gallery for more than 85 years. The mystery buyer is a Chinese hedge fund, sources say.
The seller is David Wildenstein, heir to a controversial fortune that included money earned by dealing in art that Nazis stole from Jews. His father is Guy Wildenstein, who was cleared earlier this year of money laundering to avoid inheritance taxes in France — even though the judge, Olivier Geron, said that Wildenstein and his family had shown a “clear intention” to conceal their wealth.
Last fall, Ukrainian born billionaire Len Blavatnik — the owner of Warner Music and a “Hamilton” investor — sued David Wildenstein for $10 million for allegedly reneging on a verbal agreement to sell him the property for $79 million — but a judge threw that out of court last month.
The 25,000 square foot property was built in 1932.