HEARTH & HOME
CELEBRITY HOMES
Barbra Streisand
N
ew York virtually crawls with celebrities - as many as
in Hollywood - and through the years, some of the
world’s most renowned stars have found a place in
the city to call home.
Such is the case with the Upper West Side, 14-story
co-op on a tree-lined street surrounded by other notable architecture
near Central Park. The building at 505 West End Avenue, close to the
New York action, was first an inspiration to Sergei Rachmaninoff, a
Russian pianist, composer and conductor whose family fled Russia after
the country’s revolution. Rachmaninoff lived in the building for several
years around 1920, and composed many of his most important works
there, just a few floors above the apartment that Barbra Streisand chose
50
GAZELLE
as the set for her 1996 romantic comedy “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”
Streisand was enchanted by apartment 3B, now for sale, while
researching locations for the film she both produced and starred in,
inspired by the light filling the space, and the views of treetops and the
architectural elements of the buildings across the street.
Designed by architect Gaetano Ajello and built in 1922, the building
followed Ajello’s pre-World War I flamboyant period. In the 1920s, his
work tended to be a bit more sedate, his style recognized throughout
the Upper West Side, where his apartment buildings are most prolific.
Unit 3B, with its 11 large windows, has three bedrooms and two baths,
and has undergone a total restoration from the studs out.
Cheerful, but sophisticated, the apartment has new everything, from