Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Manhattan Home Just Sold for Way Over Its Asking Price
An intense bidding war over Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s longtime Manhattan residence ended in the one-bedroom, roughly 3,000-square-foot co-op selling for around $14 million, more than 40% above the asking price.
Noble Black of Douglas Elliman, a listing agent for the property, said more than 50 would-be buyers toured the home in the first week after it listed for $9.95 million. Eventually 11 offers were submitted. One buyer was willing to pay even more than $14 million but the offer was rejected by the Newman family because it seemed unlikely the person would pass the co-op board interview process as they wouldn’t be using the property as a primary home.
Black declined to comment on the identity of the buyers, saying only that they are a couple in finance.
The views over the reservoir in Central Park were a selling point.
While the connection to the legendary Hollywood couple was a huge selling point for some, for the eventual buyers, it was just a bonus, he said.
Instead, Black attributed the huge response to the physical attributes of the apartment, which comprises half of the top floor of a 15-story limestone co-op building at 1120 Fifth Avenue, in Carnegie Hill.
“It was the most perfectly romantic storybook apartment,” Black said. The property has sweeping views of Central Park and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, multiple terraces, a formal dining room with detailed moldings and a large living room with a wood-burning fireplace at one end and a quaint hidden bar at the other.
The apartment measures close to 3,000 square feet.
There is a hidden bar off the living room.
The couple bought the apartment in the 1980s.
The bedroom suite has a separate seating area.
Newman and Woodward, who were married for 50 years, bought the apartment in the 1980s and configured the space to have a single bedroom. A prospective second bedroom was used as a library.
Black said he and his co-listing agent Jennifer Stillman priced the property just shy of $10 million because it only had one bedroom and it is in need of renovation. There are still original details, such as 1980s tile and wallpaper in the kitchen.
Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, pictured in 1989, were married for 50 years.
Still, the agents knew that the apartment had details that would be highly desirable. Black pointed to the sprawling terrace off the living room, the high ceilings and the views. “If you were fine with having a fantastic one bedroom, you were never going to find a better one than this,” he said. “What was crazy to us was how deep that market was.”
The irony, he said, was that the week the showings took place, the weather in New York was terrible. “It was raining every single day, just like monsoons,” he said. “It was the worst time to ever launch something like this. It just shows that none of it matters.”
The property came on the market in early December 2024 and was in contract a couple of weeks later.
Bidding wars aren’t unheard of in New York City real estate but it is unusual to have one with so many offers, Black said. This one is particularly notable since prices have been sliding in Upper East Side co-op buildings that were once considered some of New York’s finest.
In recent years, the cachet of living in these types of buildings has eroded as younger buyers’ choose condo buildings with fewer rules, or apartments in hipper neighborhoods downtown.
The couple used the apartment as a pied-à-terre, entertaining a who’s who of entertainment personalities there. Newman, known for his roles in films like “The Color of Money,” died in 2008. Woodward, who lives in Westport, Conn., has retired from public life after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2007. She was known for films like “The Three Faces of Eve.”
A call to one of their daughters, Clea Newman Soderlund, wasn’t immediately returned.
The buyers’ agents were Maria Pashby, Joanna Pashby and Wendy J. Sarasohn, all of Brown Harris Stevens. Sarasohn declined to comment.
