The French government sold an eight-story brick townhouse at 1143 5th Avenue in the Upper East Side for the tidy sum of $36.4 million in November, and last week, the new owners filed applications to expand the building by five stories.
The apartment house occupies a tony spot between 95th and 96th Streets in the heart of Carnegie Hill, just across the street from Central Park and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. The structure will nearly double in size, and the roof line will rise from 83 to 149 feet. The number of units will shrink from seven to six, even as the interior square footage grows from 15,900 to 28,000 square feet. The average apartment will weigh in at 4,666 square feet, and that means very expensive condos are in the works.
The first floor currently hosts an apartment, but it will be replaced by a lobby and 2,154 square feet for a doctor’s office. Six duplex apartments will be stacked on top.
Deeds list the owner as United Corporate Services, a legal services company headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., and Stephen Gallira is the filing representative on the permit. Gabriel Massa, principal of Neptune, N.J.-based Massa Multimedia Architecture, will be responsible for the design.
The French first put the property on the market for $32.5 million in April 2014, the Times reported, along with an 18-room duplex at 740 Park Avenue that served as the residence for the French ambassador to the United Nations.
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