Joan Rivers' House Looks Better Than She Does

(MoneyWatch)  Joan Rivers has listed her penthouse at 38 East 61st Street for $25 million. I must say, when I saw the photos of the interior, I couldn't believe Rivers actually lives there. Usually a house reflects the persona of the owner.
The Joan Rivers penthouse condo looks like something lifted from some royal palace somewhere, or perhaps the Hotel Crillon, in Paris. The recent winner of Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, Rivers bought her condominium 20 years ago, and has been the building's condominium association president for a long time. According to the New York Times, she was rumored to have squashed Italian politician (and member of the family that founded and ran Fiat, soon-to-be owner of much of Chrysler) Susanna Agnelli's bid to purchase a second unit in the building.

According to the listing at Sotheby's International Realty, the Rivers abode has 3 bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths, with plenty of gracious entertaining space in 5,100 square feet. There is the all-important outdoor space (overlooking Central Park, natch!), and the property is being sold with outside storage (the in-law unit?). The price seems relatively reasonable (at $5,000 per square foot) if you factor in all the painstaking work that's been done. All that gold leaf doesn't come cheap.

Clearly, this home has been a labor of love, a refuge of Architectural Digest (will we see it featured there next month?) proportions that must have calmed her in a way that dishing on celebrity hanky panky and designer couture on the red carpet did not.

At least when she's living in Los Angeles with daughter Melissa Rivers and her grandchild, she won't have to look at the ceiling for a beautiful blue sky.

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