statler
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I'd complain about Boston proper's population density shrinking, but with all the new units brought on line recently, I doubt this will have any effect.
Boston Globe - August 8, 2008
Boston Globe - August 8, 2008
Boston makes way for its biggest mansion
$23m home unites 2 Back Bay edifices
By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff | August 8, 2008
With 15 bathrooms, six parking spaces, and 24,000 square feet of living space, it might be found sprawling across some suburb. But this $23 million mansion is smack in the middle of Boston.
The largest single-family home in all of Boston is being assembled from two adjoining buildings at Exeter Street and Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay. Its owner, investment executive Ofer Nemirovsky, spent a decade purchasing the four condominiums in the Exeter building and the adjacent Commonwealth townhouse, and is now combining them in a two-year, gut renovation project.
The house's luxuriant features include an atrium bordered by a glass walkway and railings, according to building plans filed with the city. Each of three children's bedrooms has its own bathroom and dressing room. The master suite has "his" and "hers" studies, dressing rooms, and bathrooms.
There's more: an elevator, a sitting room, living room, parlor, media room, family room, exercise room, upper lounge, an "eat-in study," a 27-foot, oval-shaped library, and an office for the house manager.
"You've got to be kidding me - that's insane," said David Kaufman, as he stopped to gawk at the building while walking his Bernese mountain dog one July day.
With workers crawling like ants along the wall of scaffolding, the renovation has Back Bay abuzz. Passersby invariably stop to speculate about what extreme amenities the home might have. One rumor making the rounds is an indoor pool. There is no pool, according to the plans, but the house will have a "ball-playing court" in the basement, next to the recreation room.
"Did a Saudi prince buy it?" asked John Arena, a Florida resident who is renting a Back Bay apartment this summer. Arena has watched as the renovation evolved over the weeks, but admitted he "didn't know it was one house."
Nemirovsky, a managing director of HarbourVest, an international private equity firm in Boston, declined repeated requests for an interview, saying he wanted to maintain his family's privacy.
Even by the imposing standards of Back Bay, which has been home to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's former wife, Joan, and car dealer Herb Chambers, Nemirovsky's house stands out for its grandeur and its size. Luxury condominium projects such as the Mandarin Oriental-Boston are mushrooming all over downtown, some with units as large as a suburban house. But Nemirovsky's residence is Boston's largest, according to The Warren Group, a real estate research firm.
"Nothing comes close," said Warren analyst Alan Pasnik.
The scale of the house recalls the Gilded Age, when Boston's wealthy families between 1860 and 1890 constructed the mansions that line the boulevards of Back Bay. Over the next century, the single-family residences on Commonwealth were chopped into apartments, condominiums, college dormitories, or professional offices.
In recent years that trend has reversed, as downtown living has become increasingly popular among the well-to-do. "It is a trend recently to put back together some of the townhouses that were originally single-family houses," said Pauline Chase-Harrell, a preservation consultant and former chair of the Boston Landmarks Commission.
She said wealthy buyers are preserving the city's history by paying for expensive repairs to buildings with crumbling brownstone facades, water damage, or structural problems.
Last year, for example, Christopher Egan, former real estate executive and son of an EMC Corp. founder, agreed to pay more than $15 million to buy the stately Gamble Mansion at 5 Commonwealth Avenue from the Boston Center for Adult Education, which has used it for classrooms since 1941.
Egan, now the US permanent representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, plans to restore the 13,000-square-foot building to a single-family residence, according to Back Bay real estate agents who did not want to be identified by name because the sale hasn't closed.
Egan did not return calls seeking comment.
Ofer and Shelly Nemirovsky, meanwhile, will soon have a house that matches the couple's flair for entertainment. The couple cochaired the Esplanade Association's first "Moondance" gala fund-raiser for the riverfront park in 2004. The elegant dinner and dancing affair included an auction that featured a private dinner with former CIA director George Tenet as one of its prizes.
And on a bitter night in January 2006, the couple hired the B-52's to perform at his 48th birthday party, in which guests wore period costumes and some were decked out in beehive hairdos. The couple, who currently live in Cambridge, are also high-profile philanthropists, donating to causes ranging from the African Wildlife Foundation to the Greenlight literacy fund in Boston. He is also a trustee of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
Nemirovsky began acquiring his properties in 1997, according to public records of deeds, buying one of the 25 Exeter condos for $2 million, and another for $554,000. By January 2007, he owned both buildings, spending about $13.55 million in total, according to public records. The renovation cost is listed on the permit at $9.75 million.
The Exeter structure, a former clinic, is an unusually wide building trimmed in brownstone that spans from the corner to the public alley that splits the block. The Commonwealth building is one of many tall, narrow townhouses in Back Bay.
The Nemirovskys apparently chose the two because they can be combined without disturbing the exterior structure: the side wall of 196 Commonwealth is also the back wall of 25 Exeter.
William Young, Boston's senior preservation planner, said the owner is replacing windows and repairing masonry, yet the impact on the exterior will be minimal, as required by state preservation laws.
Inside, however, the historic combines with the contemporary. Imants Dankers, a Medfield structural engineer who consulted on creating the atrium, said the building's original interior finishes and moldings are being preserved on the master-suite floor. But the third and fourth floors that look out onto the atrium will have unusual glass features, including a glass walkway embedded in the wood flooring that will match the glass railings on the stairwell, he said.
Boston police officer Paul Perry, while working his sidewalk post outside the project, has had time to study the house. It is, he said, an indication of the dramatic changes he has watched take place in Boston during 28 years on the force.
"It's a whole different world," he said.
Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.
