Bill Ackman Is Getting Out of the Beresford

Photo: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Bill Ackman owns two penthouses in Manhattan, and that might be enough for one billionaire. Yesterday, he listed two Central Park West apartments that he bought in 2017, a simpler time, back before he threw his support behind the president-elect, became one of the most prominent figures in the anti-DEI movement, and perhaps the world’s most notorious wife-guy.

The side-by-side apartments in the Beresford were Ackman’s sort of divorced-dad lair — the units he bought in the middle of his separation from his ex, who kept their $26 million duplex upstairs. As Mansion Global reported, this way he could stay close to the couple’s three children (the eldest of whom may have sparked his crusade against Harvard and higher education’s supposed liberal bias). And now the co-ops don’t fit his current taste for glass boxes — like his Norman Foster–designed penthouse on 77th Street that he bitterly fought his neighbors to build, or his $91 million apartment in a tower on 57th Street, which he told the New York Times he only bought “for fun” with a group of investors. (He seems to think he can flip the place for $500 million.)

The Beresford Photo: Sloane Square LLC

The two units — 8E and 8F — are in the Beresford, the 1929 Beaux-Arts building designed by Emery Roth, and they’re listed at a loss. He’s asking $19.9 million, seven years after reportedly spending $22 million to buy them.

Each is listed separately, but the listings note they share a landing and can be combined. While both apartments are the same size, at about 3,000 square feet, with three bedrooms, three baths, and a living room looking over the park, 8F might be pricier thanks to a more recent renovation: There’s a new kitchen and a showy primary bathroom with a glass box of a shower overlooking the park. (A lack of photos of the bathrooms or kitchen in 8E suggests they’ll need an update.)

The living room of apartment 8F Photo: Sloane Square LLC

In general, the apartments are staged to be as anonymous as possible. But there’s still some art Ackman seems to have left behind. Over the fireplace, in the living area of 8E, is a 1952 oil by Jan Müller, a German-born painter who ended up in New York City in 1941 thanks to his father, a political activist who fled Hitler’s rise. It’s hard to imagine that painting, or any of the furniture that would have meshed with the prewar apartments, following Ackman to his glass-box penthouse.

211 Central Park West 8E Photo: Sloane Square LLC