Upper East Side brokers are tipping their hats to retired Red Hat Inc. co-founder Marc Ewing. The 33-year-old software designer closed early this year on a Carnegie Hill townhouse priced higher per square foot than any property in the neighborhood's history.
On Jan. 6, Mr. Ewing paid $11.25 million for No. 13 East 94th Street , a five-story, 20-foot-wide limestone mansion off Fifth Avenue . With 7,600 square feet of interior space, that's $1,480 per square foot.
"He won the race-he wins the prize for highest price per square foot ever paid in Carnegie Hill," said townhouse specialist Jed Garfield, of Leslie J. Garfield & Co. "But it's an absolutely beautiful block, and the house was literally move-your-furniture-in quality. You didn't even need to paint."
Just for the record, Woody Allen's $17.7 million purchase of No. 48 East 92nd Street was the highest price ever paid for a Carnegie Hill townhouse. Then again, his 40-foot-wide mansion had upwards of 15,000 square feet, and therefore cost the filmmaker about $1,200 per square foot.
Mr. Ewing, the new recordholder, was unavailable for comment, as was the townhouse's listing broker, Nikki Field, a senior vice president at Sotheby's International Realty.
Red Hat, Mr. Ewing's company, emerged in the mid- to late 90's as the most popular distributor of the Linux computer operating system. The company's I.P.O. was one of the most successful ever, and in 1999 Fortune magazine estimated his fortune at $775 million. At the end of that year, Mr. Ewing stepped down from his position as Red Hat's chief technical officer, and by August of 2002, he surfaced in an unlikely position: as publisher of a quarterly rock-climbing journal called Alpinist Magazine, which is based in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Mr. Ewing bought his East 94th Street home from an investor named James Walsh, who held title with his wife, Mary Anne. City records show that they bought the house from an estate sale in 1998 for $3.5 million. The couple then commenced a gut renovation that was completed in the fall of 2001. Sotheby's listed the house late last year for $12 million, and it sold in under three weeks.
The 15-room, Romanesque-revival mansion has a brick-over-limestone façade which is itself covered with California stucco. The property includes a terrace, balcony, decked rooftop and landscaped garden. A 1,200-square-foot finished basement-which is not included in the property's 7,600-square-foot total-contains a 1,200-bottle wine cellar, exercise room and photographic dark room. The 15 rooms on the house's upper levels range from 10 to 14 feet in height, and there are four working fireplaces with mantelpieces circa 1892. Some of the other features include a custom mosaic floor, a commercial-quality kitchen, bow-front windows on the third and fourth floors, a European-style double master suite, and a fifth-floor media room with an oversized skylight.
Mr. Ewing's chart-topping purchase of 13 East 94th Street wasn't the first time he made waves in the seemly world of Upper East Side luxury real estate. In October of 1999, he went into contract on a $7.9 million 12-room co-op at 1120 Fifth Avenue -and then raised eyebrows in the old-fashioned co-op when he flipped it in May of 2000 for a listing price of $9.3 million. Not very proper, Mr. Ewing!
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