A Fifth Avenue maisonette duplex facing Central Park, designed by one of America’s great architects, is now in contract.
The home, formerly owned by the late modernist architect Henry Cobb, partner to I.M. Pei, is at 969 Fifth Ave. Just steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was last asking $3.49 million.
Cobb, who died in New York in 2020 at age 93, was a Boston native who traced his lineage back to 1626. He moved to New York in 1950 and was known for creating 20th-century skyscrapers like Boston’s John Hancock Tower. He lived in the maisonette with his beloved wife, sculptor Joan Spaulding Cobb, since the 1950s and raised their family together. Joan passed away last year, at age 95.
Cobb designed the maisonette so that many of the living spaces faced tree-lined East 78th Street and the limestone facade of the Duke house, at 1 E. 78th St., through a long line of windows. The duplex also comes with multiple entrances off the building’s lobby and Fifth Avenue, plus a staffed elevator entrance.
The three-bedroom, three-bath home is 2,800 square feet. It features a main bedroom suite next to an adjacent library, with a woodburning fireplace, both on the second floor with views of Central Park. The bedroom suite also comes with a dressing room, multiple closets and a windowed bath. There’s a gourmet eat-in kitchen with a restaurant-grade cooktop and two Gaggenau ovens, to boot.
The first floor was used as an office and Joan’s sculpture studio, with a woodburning fireplace.
The listing brokers are Amanda S. Brainerd, Gerard Ryan and Simone Mailman of Brown Harris Stevens.