Live like world’s second richest man! Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is selling historic Fifth Avenue mansion for record-breaking $80million
- Slim, 75, bought Benjamin N. and Sarah Duke House at 1009 Fifth Avenue for $44million in 2010
- Beaux-Arts home built in 1901 overlooking from Central Park has eight floors and measures 20,000 square feet
- Duke House is one of last private mansions along portion of Fifth Avenue once known as Millionaires’ Row
- Slim, whose net worth is $77.1billion, has lived for past 40 years in six-bedroom home in Mexico City
Telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim is hoping to add $80million to his coffers from the sale of his lavish Manhattan townhouse, which has just been put on the market.
The 75-year-old Mexican businessman who, according to Forbes Magazine, is the world’s second richest man after Microsoft founder Bill Gates, bought the ornate mansion situated on Fifth Avenue across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art for $44million in 2010 – or nearly half of the current asking price.
Known as the Benjamin N. and Sarah Duke House, or the Duke-Semans Mansion, the palatial home at 1009 Fifth Avenue has eight floors and measures about 20,000 square feet.
Built in 1901 in the Beaux-Arts architectural style, the limestone and red brick townhouse boasts 11 fireplaces, hand-carved wood paneling , a grand staircase and fixtures trimmed with gold leaf.
If Mr Slim, whose net worth currently stands at $77.1billion, gets the hefty asking price of $80mllion, that would make it the most expensive mansion ever sold in New York City.
A distant second would be the Harkness Mansion at 4 East 75th Street, which investor J. Christopher Flowers bought in 2006 for then-record-breaking $53million, reported the New York Daily News.
Sothby’s International Reality, which is handling the prestigious listing, wrote on its site that the Duke House is one of the last surviving private mansions that once lined a section of Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park that had been known as Millionaires’ Row.
According to a report produced in 1974 by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, the opulent mansion was originally owned by Benjamin N. Duke, the head of the North Carolina-based American Tobacco Company.
In the second part of the 20th century, it passed into the family of Mary D.B. Semans, a relative of the mansion’s first owner.
Carlos Slim bought the landmark home five years ago from cab driver-turned-Russian billionaire oil magnate, and more recently real estate investor, Tamir Sapir.
Slim said at the time he considered the Duke-Semans Mansion a good investment but indicated that he had no plans to move in there, reported Bloomberg.com.
The fabulously wealthy widower and father of six has spent the past 40 years living in a modest six-bedroom, eight-bathroom house in the Lomas de Chapultepec section of his native Mexico City, located only 3 miles from where he grew up.
If this is out of your price range and Puerto Vallarta is where you want to be, you can find some great real estate in Puerto Vallarta too!
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