Just weeks after influential New Wave pioneer Ric Ocasek of the Cars was found dead by his estranged wife, 1980s supermodel Paulina Porizkova, the erstwhile couple’s Federal-style townhouse in New York City’s posh Gramercy Park area has returned to market at $13.9 million. The late Cars superstar and the veteran catwalker, he a 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and she a two-time Sports Illustrated cover model, purchased the property shortly before their 1989 marriage for $2.5 million, and first set it out for sale on the open market earlier this year at $15.25 million.
Built in the mid-1800s, rebuilt sometime before 1920 and updated extensively since, the residence’s four, elevator-serviced floors contain four and potentially more bedrooms and three full and two half bathrooms in almost 5,800 square feet. Debbie Korb of Sotheby’s Intl. Realty holds the listing.
A long, narrow, zig-zag entrance hall leads to a ground-level kitchen arranged around a large island and a lavishly capacious, double-height living room that stretches almost- 35 feet long with an austere fireplace, wall-to-wall cheetah-print carpeting and a wall of windows that give way to a small, south-facing garden. A mezzanine level offers a family room and office area with built-in desk space; the finished basement houses a recording studio. An en suite guest bedroom shares the third floor with a master suite sheathed in pink-striped wallpaper with riotous floral carpeting. The top floor includes a pair of guest bedrooms, a library nook and a light-filled art studio under a vaulted glass ceiling.
Tax records indicate the former couple, who parted ways in 2016, also long owned a nearly 5.5-acre country estate about 90 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, in Millbrook, N.Y., they snapped up in 1997 for $650,000.