George Plimpton’s publishing office and party pad, where literature and being lit often went hand in hand, is looking for a taker.
The family of the late co-founder and editor of The Paris Review has listed the 4,700-square-foot Upper East Side duplex for $5.3 million, according to an ad that appeared Tuesday.
A well-worn stop for new-to-town journalists, A-list authors and Rolodex-at-the-ready agents, the five-bedroom co-op was Plimpton’s home from the 1950s, based on news reports, until he died of a heart attack at 76 in 2003.
Among the apartment’s signature features is a long living room with a pair of fireplaces that was the scene of regular raucous bashes starting around the time Plimpton moved in. Rubbing elbows in the cozy space with up-and-coming strivers through the years were VIP guests such as Truman Capote, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Paul McCartney.
Another guest, writer Mona Simpson, who worked at the Review as a grad student and had early stories appear in its pages, serves as the website and quarterly’s publisher today.
Plimpton reportedly set up shop in the five-story prewar walkup soon after he, Harold Humes and Peter Matthiessen founded the Review in 1952 as a showcase for up-and-coming talent. Plimpton, who also dabbled in acting, teaching and piano playing and served as the city’s commissioner of fireworks, was the Review’s editor from 1953 until his death.
In addition to talent scouting, Plimpton was an avid writer known for participatory journalism involving sports: His exploits with boxers, hockey players and football teams provided fodder for humorous books.
The building, one of four adjacent black-and-white structures with red doors lining a cul-de-sac east of York Avenue, went co-op with its three counterparts in 1973. When exactly Plimpton purchased the apartment, overlooking the East River at the end of East 72nd Street, is not clear from the city register. But he and his family appear to have owned the unit for decades.
Two years after Plimpton’s death, the Review decamped to White Street in Tribeca, before relocating to its current home on West 27th Street in Chelsea in 2013.
In 2018 Plimpton’s wife, Sarah, and their twin daughters left East 72nd Street and moved to New Mexico after one last hurrah at the address and tapped the brokerage Douglas Elliman to sell the property for $5.5 million. But the unit did not trade after a year despite a price drop to $4.5 million and was delisted.
In the years since the co-op appears to have functioned as a rental. The last time it was on the market, in 2020, it was asking $22,000 a month, StreetEasy shows.
Whitney Mogavero, the Elliman agent marketing the site this time around, had no comment by press time.
